Phil Hawes still salty about Cormier’s commentary bias, spotlights behavior after apology

Phil Hawes had a very contentious moment after his victory over Deron Winn over the weekend at UFC Austin.

Daniel Cormier’s commentary skills have often been criticized but his unwillingness to let go of personal bias is especially problematic.

Cormier often champions fighters from American Kickboxing Academy – his own club. Notable AKA alumni are Luke Rockhold, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Cain Velasquez and more. Naturally Deron Winn is one of the AKA boys.

This produced a classical moment between Cormier and Hawes.

Even though Cormier urged Hawes to be respectful – he was championing Winn. Hawes subsequently apologized at the press conference while sporting blood stained hair stemming from his victory over Winn.

But just a day later Hawes took his apology back and posted the following:

“I take fighting extremely personal because I sacrificed so much for this #pettasf” Hawes captioned the biased shout outs.

Earlier in June Cormier dismissed bias concerns saying:

“I don’t watch this with a bias. If my teammates are fighting, I hope that they win,” he said.

“But unfortunately when that happens, I tend to go the opposite way. Blagoy (Ivanov) was mad at me after his last fight because he was like, ‘DC, bro, I was doing good things, but you almost made it seem like…’ I tend to go the opposite way to try not to.”

“Deron Winn when he’s fighting he’s like ‘Dude.’ It’s hard because you’re a human being. That’s why at a point I can sympathize with the referees and the judges because they’re human beings.”