Long before the championship belts, the Olympic singlet, or the UFC commentary desk, Daniel Cormier was just a kid in Lafayette, Louisiana, trying to avoid getting picked on. That context matters when you hear him tell the story now because the version of himself he remembers isn’t the legend we all know and love.

Speaking with Megan Olivi for the UFC in a recent interview, Cormier didn’t sugarcoat it. “I bet the first fight I had was probably with the kid that I speak about him constantly, and he gets mad at me. And his name was Gilbert. He used to beat me up all the time. Like all the time, Megan. It was crazy. You know, when you think of bad kids, nobody was like these kids in Louisiana.”

DC even described moments where he’d get hit hard enough to fall, hear the other kids react, then pick up his stuff and leave. No swinging back, just survival. That pattern, he admitted, shaped him in the worst way at first. “It honestly built like a fear of confrontation that I had for a long time until I learned how to wrestle.” Wrestling didn’t just give him a skillset. It flipped the switch in his head. “Then it changed everything because I kicked his a–.”

That’s where the former champion’s reflection gets interesting. He doesn’t frame Gilbert as some cartoon villain. He frames him as an uncomfortable teacher. “I think I was born with fight inside of me and it had to be drawn out of me,” Cormier said. “I’m thankful to Gilbert, right? Because without him showing me how unfair the world could be at times, I would have never known how to overcome. I would have stayed that coward little scared boy.”

The language is raw, but the point is clear. Cormier sees the throughline from being scared of confrontation to becoming someone who faces it head-on. The Louisiana native became a six-time U.S. World or Olympic Team member in wrestling, won medals on the international stage, and later captured UFC titles at light heavyweight and heavyweight. He’s one of only two fighters in UFC history to hold belts in two divisions at the same time, and the first to defend both. That’s not just talent. That’s a mindset built over years.

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There’s even a strange, full-circle footnote to the Gilbert story. Years later, when he was already a UFC champion, he ran into his old bully through family. In a 2025 episode of the Good Guy/Bad Guy show, he shared, “I was like, I’m just at my mom’s house, he goes, ‘Imma come over there, you better not leave.’ He was going to bully me again….I go, ‘Gilbert, I am the UFC champion, do you know how this turns out now?’”

Georges St-Pierre and Chris Weidman have both talked openly about being bullied growing up. It doesn’t mean bullying creates champions. But it does show how adversity, when paired with the right outlet, can reshape someone’s direction, and for Daniel Cormier, life has never been easy.

Daniel Cormier gets emotional as he opens up about the tragic death of his daughter

When Daniel Cormier talks about adversity shaping him, he isn’t just talking about bullies or bad days. He’s talking about loss that never really leaves you. In the conversation with Megan Olivi, Cormier opened up about the death of his three-month-old daughter, Caden, who was killed in a drunk-driving accident.

As he put it, “It was the worst thing that I’ve ever dealt with in my entire life. Like there’s no… When you go through something like that, you realize how unfair life can be… Yeah, it sucked. It sucked really, really bad. Still to this day, I struggle with it and think about it.”

There’s no neat lesson wrapped around that loss. The former champion doesn’t pretend it made him stronger overnight. What he does say is that it reframed everything. When you carry something that heavy, smaller problems stop feeling so loud. “You deal with something so bad that nothing else ever can hit you in the way that that did,” he explained.

Daniel Cormier isn’t telling people to seek out hardship. He’s saying that when it finds you, the response matters. You can walk home and stay scared. Or you can find your way back, stronger, clearer, and more willing to meet the next challenge head-on.