Daniel Cormier soon will add actor to his lengthy resume.
The recent UFC Hall of Fame inductee, a former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion and current broadcast analyst, announced Friday heâs set to star in an upcoming TV series based on âWarrior,â a 2011 film regarded by many as the cream of the crop of MMA movies.
âI came from Lafayette, Louisiana to the (bright) lights of the Octagon and now I take on Hollywood!â Cormier posted on Twitter. âI teased this a while back but now itâs a reality thanks to @paramountplus and @lionsgate! I am truly honored and excited for this next chapter in my life!â
According to Deadline, Gavin OâConnor, who wrote and directed the film version of âWarrior,â will turn that movie into a 10-episode series developed by Paramount+. Cormier will play one of four fighters the series will focus on. Golden Globe winner Gina Rodriguez (âJane the Virginâ) has been cast in one of the fighter roles, as well.
OâConnor and series co-creator and executive producer Adair Cole are in the process of writing scripts and casting the other two fighter roles, Deadline reported.
OâConnor told Deadline the series will follow the four fightersâ lives outside the cage, and they eventually will fight each other. âWeâre going to follow them through 10 episodes and hook the audience into their journeys.â
Cormier will play a fighter who is reeling from his wifeâs death from cancer, leaving him as a single father with debt from her medical bills. Rodriguez will play the daughter of a boxing referee who is married to a muay Thai fighter and becomes a fighter herself.
Cormier won the UFCâs light heavyweight title in 2015. A little more than three years later, he won the heavyweight belt to become a simultaneous two-division champion. He retired in 2020 after a loss to Stipe Miocic in an attempt to regain the heavyweight title he lost to him a year prior. Earlier this month, he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. Heâs a fixture at the broadcast table for the UFC in his post-fighting career.
âWarriorâ the film starred Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte and earned Oscar and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Nolte for Best Supporting Actor. Hardy and Edgerton play estranged brothers who enter the same MMA tournament and ultimately have to fight each other. Nolte plays their recovering alcoholic father.
The movie was actually good. Not sure why they would cast him. Surely some unknown actor that can actually act would have been better.
This is the reboot heâs in
Reading the first few lines. I imagined him as a coach. I could see him being a good, emotional coach.
Good for him. Jon Jones will likely go on a coke binge after hearing the news while screaming âDaniel fucking CormierâŚ? It shouldâve been MeâŚ!â
Happy for DC. He seems a nice guy but he can barely string a sentence together on the commentary panel
harsh ?
Sorry probably is a bit harsh. His speaking is definitely not free flowing though and it grinds my gears
Daniel Cormier doesnât have anything left to prove in MMA, but that doesnât mean the UFC Hall of Famer is totally ruling out one last fight before he hang up his gloves for good.
âI said this when I retired, I said Iâm only going to fight for championship belts,â Cormier said Friday in a Twitter Q&A with Monster Energy. âBut itâs like, I donât deserve a heavyweight championship fight. Stipe [Miocic] is not the champ. He beat me the last couple times. I donât deserve a shot at the heavyweight title. If I was ever going to fight again â and which, I donât want to â I would have to go all the way back to 205 pounds.
âWhy? Let me tell you why. Because I didnât lose. Remember, I vacated the title whenever I didnât want to go back down there, when [Jon] Jones was going to fight [Alexander] Gustafsson. So because I vacated the title, now maybe there is some potential in, âHey Dana [White], you think I could fight Jiri Prochazka for the title?â Especially with your name recognition and what youâve become outside of the fight game, maybe thereâs some value in that.â
Cormier, 43, reigned over the light heavyweight division as UFC champion from 2015-18, defending his title three times before vaulting up to the heavyweight division and becoming just one of four fighters in UFC history to hold two belts simultaneously. Cormier ultimately walked away from MMA in August 2020 following back-to-back losses to Stipe Miocic.
Cormier hasnât competed at 205 pounds since January 2018, when he vanquished Volkan Oezdemir to defend his light heavyweight championship at UFC 220. But if the opportunity ever arose for âDCâ to mount a comeback fight to recapture one of his old titles, he knows a move back down to light heavyweight would be the only fair route to take, if only because he never actually lost his 205-pound belt in the cage.
âI donât want to, but I would have to,â Cormier said. âI mean, if I had the desire to fight and I wanted to try to accomplish something great one more time, then it would require [going back down to light heavyweight], because there just is no title fight at heavyweight.
âI donât deserve a title fight at heavyweight.â
Of course, Cormier is also well aware of his ticking clock to be able to achieve such a feat.
âIf it ever happens, it better happen soon,â he said. âIâm 44 years old in March. But hey, Randy Couture won the heavyweight championship at 45, so itâs not impossible.â
Will he be losing weight for the role or is that part of the story like that kevin james movie? His acting in the role of an unbiased commentator has been shit so far
See My DC thrad today , hes coming back to shock the world , LOL
Gavin OâConnor is a good writer and director. Now that I see it says Cormier is one of four that the series will focus on - and not the main or entire focus - Iâm more interested.