By KEVIN FOOTE
Written for the LSWA
No matter how much has happened in Daniel Cormier’s remarkable athletic career and life in general, he’ll never forget that day.
It was 1991 and first-year Northside High wrestling coach Tank Lotief was driving around the neighborhood putting up fliers at area schools hoping to convince some youngsters to join in his team.
When he turned on Dunand Street in front of Northside High, Lotief saw a few kids fighting while playing football.
“My friend P.J. had a kicking tee and we didn’t have many kicking tees,” Cormier laughed. “He was complaining because he was having to retrieve the ball over and over again, so we started fighting.”
Lotief appreciated their spunk and offered them a more productive way to scuffle.
“Hey man, y’all want to wrestle?” he remembers yelling at the kids.
“I loved wrestling since I was a little kid,” Cormier said. “We always watched WCW back in the day. My mom would put old mattresses in our backyard and try to help me burn some energy.”
So Cormier and his buddies responded, “Is it like what you see on TV?”
Disappointed how poorly the Vikings just fared in his first state tournament as coach, Lotief lied to them.
“Oh yeah,” he yelled.
“Sure I was lying, but they showed up.”
Over three decades later, it’s fair to say one stayed.
“I always know that was the day that my life changed forever,” Cormier said.
The confirmation will be June 20-22 in Natchitoches when that little kid playing football across the street that fateful day is inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame after taking his favorite sport to the highest level of achievement.
Before they knew it, that man driving around in the car was driving Cormier around the state as he learned the finer points of wrestling.
“When you first start, you learn one or two things, that’s it,” Lotief revealed. “Your mind gets clouded, you can’t do all that right away. So we taught him the head move – just grab the guy by the head and throw him down. That was his move.”
That began a path that led to three state wrestling championships at Northside on his way to becoming a world champion wrestler, two-time junior college national champion, Division I national finalist, USA Olympic team champion and then eventually record-breaking UFC mixed martial arts champion.
Lotief said Cormier’s asked him many times over the years if he ever thought how different life would be had he take a different turn that day.
“I think about that all the time,” Lotief said.
Deep down, Cormier knows how his life would likely have played out.
“I probably would have still played football,” said Cormier, who was an all-state linebacker at Northside as well. “Then I’d probably be home working and do what most in my family did at that time.
“They all used to go into bricklaying back then, because we had a couple of uncles that had bricklaying businesses. That was just kind of the way things went. We graduated and we went straight to work.”
Instead, Cormier traveled the world making a name for himself at every stop.
The next big step in his path to becoming a Hall of Fame athlete came in the summer after his sophomore season in 1995 when he won a Greco-Roman bronze medal in Budapest, Hungary.
“That’s when things really changed for me,” Cormier said. “It was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I could actually be really good at this.’”
His progression was also helped by former Comeaux High wrestling coach Donald Gagnard starting freestyle wrestling during the summer at Girard Park.
“After my freshman year, they took me to North Carolina and got fifth and third place,” he said. “‘Man, if I can beat these dudes, I should be able to win at home.’”
After his three high school state titles, Cormier won two junior college national crowns at Colby Community College in Kansas and then went to Oklahoma State, where he lost in the finals to Iowa State’s Cael Sanderson.
His two-year record at Oklahoma State was 53-10 with six of those losses being to Sanderson – Olympic gold medalist who was an undefeated four-time national champion in college.
Lotief knows how much that ate at Cormier.
“He hated to lose,” Lotief remembered. “When I got him started in wrestling – he was 10 or 11 years old, He really wanted to hurt you. He despised you if you beat you … he just hated to lose.”
He also knew Cormier was about to do great things. After all, Lotief named his first born son Daniel in 1998.
“So yeah, I kind of knew he was going to be pretty good,” he laughed.
After college, Cormier won a gold at the 2003 Pan American games, finished top five in the World Championships from 2003-07, won the gold medal at the Golden Grand Prix Ivan Yarygin event in Russia and competed in two Olympic Games.
“Making the Olympic team meant a lot to me,” Cormier said. “That was a dream I had. I was a 16-year-old-kid back in 1996 watching Kurt Angle, Tom Brands and Kendall Cross win gold medals. When I made the Olympic team, that was like a lifelong dream fulfilled.”
Cormier finished fourth in the 2004 Games and was pulled as a team captain in 2008 in China because of kidney failure after cutting weight.
“Daniel really had all the attributes,” Olympic coach and fellow 2024 inductee Kevin Jackson said. “He was tough, he trained hard, he competed hard. When I first met Daniel and watched him compete, it was almost like he wasn’t getting nervous at all. He just seemed to love the thrill of competition.
“I soon found out that wasn’t the case, he was just as nervous as any of us. He had a passion to be the very best in the world. That drove him every single day.”
For Jackson, being inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame with Cormier is an extra special achievement.
“For Daniel and I go both go into the Hall of Fame and be recognized for our wrestling achievements, it’s just so gratifying,” Jackson said. “It gives you a great sense of honor. It really shows that Louisiana is really thorough in its outlook in sports in general … respectful of all sports.”
That bitter disappointment in the Olympics in 2008 wasn’t the first major obstacle Cormier overcame in his life on his way to the Hall of Fame.
His father was killed when Daniel was 7 in 1986.
He didn’t even make the state tournament his freshman season at Northside.
“My freshman year, I was just a little knucklehead from Lafayette,” Cormier admitted. “I didn’t even go to the state tournament – failed off the team. I had issues.”
In 2003, his daughter died in a traffic accident.
“My first wife Robin was very important in those moments,” Cormier said. “I knew her since I was a little boy at J.W. Faulk (elementary). She was always this rock for me in those dark times.
“I was sorry our relationship didn’t work out, but she was a special woman. She always kind of propped me up. She would prop me up so much that I started to believe. What she saw in my, I started to see it in myself. I never lost sight of that.”
Cormier also drew strength from his wrestling coaches Lotief, John Smith at Oklahoma State and Jackson, as well as teammates.
“I was always fortunate enough to have great people supporting me, like Tank and (Northside football) coach (Rick) Vicknair and coach Gagnard … Jim Ravannack in New Orleans.
“I always had great people to support me in the good times, but in the bad times as well.”
Cormier also gives enormous credit for his success to his parents – mother Audrey and second father Percy Benoit – who both passed away in the last five years.
“He was the best, man,” Cormier said of Benoit. “He taught me how to work hard, be committed, how to be around your children … he showed me everything.”
Cormier drew inspiration from Benoit’s example of maintaining Lafayette’s city parks by day, doing dishes at Alesi’s Pizza House by night and also cutting grass at graveyards sites when there was time.
“He was a hustler,” he added. “No matter what needed to be done, he would do. I thought, ‘If this man can work this hard doing things that can’t be fun for him, I love these sports, so I should be able to work that hard at something I love to do.’”
That valuable lifelong lesson led to countless athletic achievements for Cormier.
He was the UFC Fighter of the Year in 2018 on his way to the UFC Hall of Fame induction in 2022, highlighted by being the first fighter to defend titles in two weight classes.
Actually, it was his father’s hard work in a different way that pushed Cormier into UFC fighting as a profession.
After the 2008 Olympics, Cormier returned Stillwater, Okla., where he worked for a public access TV station selling ad space.
“If a person bought ad space, I would go with his little small camera,” Cormier remembered. “He’d be standing in front of a horse talking about his product.”
Needing more content, Cormier began interviewing football and basketball coaches in the area and then an ‘On the Mat’ show about wrestling.
Since his retirement from UFC fighting in 2020, Cormier works as a color TV analyst for UFC fight nights.
“I didn’t know that way back in 2008, I was practicing for my new career,” Cormier said. “I was just in front of that camera and just being creative. It lent itself to this third career that I have now in television.”
But Cormier soon learned he wasn’t a 9-to-5 guy.
“I was like, ‘I don’t like this,’” he realized. “I don’t like getting up at 9 a.m. every day and going to work.’ I don’t like having to sit in an office all time.”
So he remembered his manager telling him after the 2001 NCAA tournament that fighting could be an option at some point.
Soon, he was trying out in San Jose, California.
Again, things didn’t start smoothly.
“No, it was bad,” he revealed. “I was there for a month and got kicked in the face by Cain Velasquez and he broke my nose. I was like, ‘This is not for me.’”
Quitting, though, just wasn’t in his bones.
“I went back, because that’s what I do, right?” he said. “That’s kind of been my thing. Even when it’s not going great, I always just go back and keep trying. That’s been one of my greatest gifts – to never really give up.”
A life filled with ups and downs now has Cormier, his wife Salina and three kids – 13, 12, 3 – living the good life in Gilroy, California.
“If you start to take things for granted, you’re silly,” Cormier said. “You’ve got to be appreciative of the life you dreamt about and you somehow created it. For as much as people take credit for creating great lives, a lot of luck comes with it.
“I don’t know even know if I was the most gifted kid on my football team and I don’t know if I was the most gifted kid on my wrestling team. I just had some luck that played with hard work and some other things.”
Like playing football across the street one day.
Lafayette native Kevin Foote covered young Daniel Cormier’s career at Northside High School. Foote, a career writer and broadcaster in Acadiana, writes for the Acadiana Advocate.
