American Kickboxing Academy was home to UFC champions and Hall of Famers.
While talking to his former teammate Josh Thomson in an interview, Cormier reflected on his time at AKA, which saw Cormier, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Islam Makhachev, Luke Rockhold, and Cain Velasquez all win UFC titles. Thomson won the Strikeforce lightweight title.
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Cormier doesn’t see any other gym matching their success, and explains why they are different.
“What we had, I don’t think will ever be replicated again in the sport of mixed martial arts,” Cormier said. “I believe that there are great teams right now. I don’t know that any team will ever get to where we were. You, Luke, me, Cain, (Jon) Fitch, (Mike) Swick, (Kyle) Kingsbury, (Josh) Koscheck, Trevor (Prangley), all built from the very start in AKA. Khabib came as a wrestler. Khabib, from 2013 when he got there to when he retired, inside of AKA. Nobody was coming over as a developed guy. We were all in-house, home-built family.”
Cormier was the only fighter at AKA to win two UFC titles simultaneously, capturing both the light heavyweight and heavyweight titles. Makhachev defended his UFC lightweight title a division record four times, before relinquishing it to claim the welterweight belt.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Daniel Cormier thinks AKA had unparalleled success in MMA
