“Sorry, D.C.”
That was the same message Daniel Cormier received over and over again from longtime friends and teammates Islam Makhachev and Khabib Nurmagomedov as the results from the 2024 Olympic freestyle wrestling competitions rolled in this past week.
Heading into the Paris event, the men’s team representing the United States had high expectations to not only win the team competition, but numerous athletes were also favored to claim gold medals — or, at worst, leave with silver or bronze. The anticipation reached a fever pitch for several reasons, not the least of which was the U.S. men’s freestyle team winning medals in five of the six weight classes at the 2020 Olympics.
The stage was set for American dominance, but upset after upset began happening, and by the time the Olympic torch was passed from Paris to Los Angeles to signify the next Games taking place in 2028, the U.S. men’s wrestling team limped home with just three medals — one silver and two bronze — and not a single gold for the first time in 56 years.
“We placed half the athletes but five out of six last time, you place 90 percent, it’s hard to feel [satisfied],” Cormier said of the 2024 Olympic results on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “If you would have told me we got three out of six medals in 2008, 2012, when we weren’t wrestling as well, I’d have been pretty happy.
“But we’ve been winning team title after team title for the last three years, so we get there and it’s like we’re going to finally show that we’re the best.”
Cormier acknowledges the expectations surrounding the American team weren’t unrealistic considering the dominance shown on the international stage over the past few years.
Since the 2020 Olympics ended, wrestlers from the team that represented the U.S. in Paris claimed 10 medals in the World Championships of wrestling (a tournament identical to the Olympics that takes place during non-Olympic years but with more weight classes). To add to that, the U.S. team as a whole — combining men and women — captured the team title in both 2022 and 2023.
While many nations at the Olympics celebrated capturing medals regardless of a first-, second-, or third-place finish, Cormier says the anticipation built around the American team was championship or bust.
“It’s a failure if the U.S. team gets second,” Cormier said. “Expectations, once you set the bar so high. And that’s exactly what we did the last few years.”
That said, the UFC Hall of Famer promises no amount of criticism aimed at the U.S. wrestlers comes close to the dour way all of them are surely feeling right now.
“If anybody’s going to be disappointed, I know we are as fans, but nobody’s more disappointed than those athletes,” Cormier said. “Those guys thought they were going to rock those Olympics, and they didn’t.”
Even for first-time Olympians like Aaron Brooks — a four-time NCAA national champion from Penn State with limited experience on the international circuit — Cormier says he didn’t get much leeway because of how he made the team.
To earn his spot in Paris, Brooks had to beat incumbent 2020 Olympic champion David Taylor twice in the U.S. team trials. At the time, Taylor was widely considered the No. 1 pound-for-pound wrestler on the planet, and like it or not, Brooks beating him led to a lot of weight being added to his shoulders as he prepared to compete this past week in France.
“The craziest thing to me, I’m watching and I’m watching these guys compete and they’re competing hard and they’re trying,” Cormier said. “But Brooks, his inexperience showed at the very end, you could tell he’d been wrestling collegiately recently because going down on the leg at the end of a match collegiately is not bad, because they’ve got to go all the way behind you, they’ve got to secure the takedown. But in freestyle, they just kind of tilt you and it’s over.
“But him coming back and getting bronze medal is a big deal. This guy’s young internationally. But the expectation is if you beat the man, you’ve got to go out there and be the man.”
On a personal level, Cormier admits he was talking a big game about the U.S. team heading into the Olympics, which put him at odds with Makhachev and Nurmagomedov, who both hail from Dagestan — a breeding ground for some of the best wrestlers in the world.
Even though some Russian athletes were banned from the competition after their home nation invaded Ukraine, many Russian wrestlers ended up representing other countries, such as 21-year-old phenom Akhmed Tazhudinov, who won gold at 97kg for Bahrain after growing up in Dagestan.
Cormier says the current UFC lightweight champion and arguably the greatest UFC lightweight champion of all-time did not let him hear the end of it when the U.S. wrestlers started to struggle.
“Want me to tell you what makes it the worst? What makes it the absolute worst? These conversations I’m having with Islam and Khabib,” Cormier said. “Oh my f*cking God. Because you know I brag a lot. We’ve been winning so much, I’m bragging, I’m talking a lot of junk. And when we started losing, [Makhachev] said, ‘Sorry, DC,’ when Aaron Brooks lost because Aaron Brooks lost to a Dagestani dude that’s just wrestling for a different country. I was like, ‘Bro, can you believe that happened?’ Then Spencer [Lee] lost, and again he said ‘Sorry, DC … DC, brother, please say something.’ Because I started ignoring him, right?
“Then [Kyle] Dake loses. [Before that happened] my answer was, ‘How about Kyle Dake just smashing dudes, it’s about to be easy for Dake!’ Then you know what I get a couple of hours later? ‘Sorry DC,’ again … ‘DC, say something.’ It’s crazy. That’s what’s the worst.”
All jokes aside, Cormier can only offer words of encouragement for the U.S. wrestlers undoubtedly feeling down about their performances at the 2024 Olympics.
“Everything is learning,” Cormier said. “These guys knows that. These guys are the best wrestlers in the world and that’s why we have seen them do what they’ve done for so long. They know they’re the best in the world. Everything is learning.
“So continue to work hard and get better and know that this is the type of tournament, only the absolute best in the world get to go to the Olympic games. When they’re the absolute best in the world, anybody can win. We as Americans, we’re foolish to think anything different.”
