‘They’re Going To Be In Trouble’

UFC Corridor of Famer and former two-division world champion Daniel Cormier firmly believes Olympic gold medalist Amit Elor will make waves on this planet of combined martial arts as soon as she’s finished dominating the newbie wrestling scene.

As a two-time Olympian and the coach of a highschool wrestling workforce, Cormier has at all times stored a detailed eye on the game that’s stayed close to and pricey to his coronary heart lengthy after he traded within the headgear for a pair of four-ounce gloves. Doing so has allowed him to work with and practice alongside previous, current, and future Olympians, together with Elor.

“A bit of backstory, Amit Elor used to at all times be across the Bay space with a lady named Carolyn Wester, she coached at a membership known as Wrestling Prep and she or he teaches wrestling,” Cormier mentioned on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “She’s a girl that coaches and she or he’s an amazing coach, very good girl.

“She would convey Amit into [American Kickboxing Academy]. I didn’t know who she was however she would wrestle with the boys. I’ve all these footage of Amit, and Carolyn would take footage of Amit with the workforce. That’s one factor they do in MMA gyms. On the finish of observe, all people will get collectively for a photograph. Amit’s in lots of these footage” (h/t MMA Fighting).

At 20 years previous, Elor turned the youngest American to win a gold medal in wrestling, a document beforehand held by Henry Cejudo. She kicked off her match with a dominant 10-2 victory over 2023 reigning world champion Buse Tosun Çavuşoğlu of Turkey, adopted by back-to-back shutouts towards Poland’s Wiktoria Chołuj and Meerim Zhumanazarova of Kyrgyzstan.

Elor outscored her opponents by a shocking margin of 30-2 all through her run on the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris.

“She killed it,” Cormier mentioned of Elor. “That first match, speak about dangerous luck. The World Champion from the 12 months earlier than from that weight class will get the World Champion from the load up in her very first match. [Elor] destroys her. She went onto kill the remainder of the sphere after that.”

‘DC’ stresses that Amit Elor ought to solely pursue MMA as soon as attaining her objectives in wrestling

With the Summer Olympics scheduled to go down in her house state of California in 2028, Elor’s focus might be on bringing house one other gold medal. However when the time does come for Elor to hold up her singlet, ‘DC’ thinks the Walnut Creek native may do some severe harm in four-ounce gloves.

“She’s going to struggle,” Cormier mentioned. “She’s going to be a fighter. For pretty much as good as she is in wrestling, she does rather well in judo, she does great in jiu-jitsu. If she does begin doing [MMA] competitively, they’re going to be in hassle.”

He continued,“I really like when nice wrestlers come into combined martial arts, however I’m at all times for them doing it after they’re finished chasing their Olympic desires. You don’t get to try this once more. When you have a chance to be the perfect on this planet, you chase that so long as you’ll be able to and you then go do one thing completely different. I don’t suppose it must be coming sooner than wanted.

“You go and wrestle so long as that you must wrestle, and you then come to try to make the cash because the UFC fighter.”