Dominick Reyes is digging deeper into why he was unhappy with Daniel Cormier’s commentary at UFC 333.
The two went back and forth on social media following Saturday’s event in Abu Dhabi, with Reyes accusing Cormier of bias in calling his eventual knockout win over Azamat Murzakanov, and calling Cormier “a low IQ hater.” Cormier attempted to defuse the situation, but the social media altercation apparently inspired Reyes to begin a new YouTube series called The Commentary Scorecard.
In the first episode, Reyes broke down his specific issues with Cormier’s commentary, starting with his analysis of Murzakanov.
“‘DC’ says, ‘Well yeah, from southpaw right away. Murzakanov, you see Murzakanov switch to southpaw right away,’” Reyes said. “The problem with this comment is Murzakanov is a southpaw naturally. He’s a natural southpaw. He fights southpaw every time. He never fights orthodox ever.
“So for him to say he’s switching to southpaw is completely wrong. It just goes to show that he did no research or he’s just talking, so that’s the first minus for DC.”
Reyes also took umbrage with Anik providing backstory to the contest by bringing up past health issues, which Reyes felt was irrelevant to the fight.
“Jon Anik mentions me for the first time, but he doesn’t comment on the action or the strategy, he just says that I had blood clots in 2022,” Reyes said. “This is kind of a dead horse comment. This has already been talked about, everybody already knows about my blood clots and you’re commenting on something that really has nothing to do with the fight.
“At this point in the fight, I’ve already thrown multiple leg kicks and I’m moving really well on the outside, but up until this point, all they had done was just talk about Murzakanov.”
With Saturday’s knockout victory, Reyes has now won two straight fights and five of his past six. This positive run of form came after Reyes lost four straight fights, two of which were championship bouts. Reyes didn’t appreciate Cormier downplaying his level of competition, even when he was struggling to have his hand raised.
“DC says, ‘Everyone wrote this kid off. Went a little bit on a losing streak, was not fighting well, now he’s back fighting the best ranked fighters in the world,’” Reyes said. “That comment is incorrect because I have only fought ranked fighters in my career since going on that losing streak, so for him to say now I’m back fighting ranked fighters is another minus on his commentary because he didn’t do his research.”
Reyes’ last piece of criticism for Cormier was that he felt Cormier framed referee Mike Beltran’s stoppage in a bad light. After Reyes wobbled Murzakanov with a head kick and then dropped him with a left hand, Reyes hesitated before following up with punches to seal the finish. Cormier joked that Beltran may have let Murzakanov take unnecessary shots, which Reyes disagrees with.
“At the end of the fight, I drop Murzakanov. He curls into a ball because he’s very hurt and DC makes a comment that says, ‘Mike Beltran could have stopped the fight at any moment but he just wanted to see murder.’ See, that kind of comment, that’s a tough comment, because then you have situations like we have with Herb Dean where anywhere he goes he gets booed, he gets harassed on the street. You’re creating a narrative about how he just wants to see murder out there.
“This is a ranked fight between two ranked fighters, No. 7 vs. No. 8. So this is a high-stakes fight and Beltran is just giving us an opportunity to fight and not stop the fight early, so I do commend Beltran for not stopping it early.”
At the conclusion of his video, Reyes graded Anik, Cormier, and Paul Felder, and unsurprisingly he saved his harshest evaluation for Cormier.
“The grades I’m going to give everyone, I’m going to give Jon Anik a B, B-plus,” Reyes said. “I’m going to give DC an F-plus, and Paul Felder, I’ll give him an A. He was focused on color commentary, he was unbiased, and he kept it real.”
“But yeah, I think it’s time to hold these guys accountable,” he continued. “We go out there and we fight with our hearts, all our hearts, and we give it our best every time we go out. I expect the same from everybody in the organization to go out there and give their best and get better. It’s not good enough just being in there just talking. You’ve got to do your research, you’ve got to be well-informed, and you’ve got to be unbiased. Being biased, that’s not cool. … It doesn’t matter if you trained a guy or worked with a guy, whatever. You have to be unbiased when you go out there, so this is me holding these guys accountable.”
