Daniel Cormier blown away by Cael Sanderson, Penn State success at NCAA Wrestling Championships

Former double UFC champion Daniel Cormier was blown away by Cael Sanderson and Penn State’s performance at the 2024 NCAA Wrestling Championships over the weekend.

Cormier, a former national finalist at Oklahoma State and Olympic team member before his MMA career, was broadcasting in Kansas City, seeing the Nittany Lions up close. Once again, Penn State dominated by breaking the scoring record and margin of victory record.

Oh yeah, the Nittany Lions had four national champions, six finalists of the 10 weight classes and eight All-Americans overall.

“They won by 100 points,” Cormier said on The Pat McAfee Show. “If you split their team in half, they still would have been in the top three teams. They are so good. This guy Cael Sanderson. I don’t know what type of deal he made with the devil, but he’s won everywhere he won in college …

“(Some) of those college victories were against a young man from Oklahoma State: Daniel Cormier, he beat him in the national finals. We were on the Olympic team together, he won the Olympics. It’s like no matter what this guy’s done, they’ve won.” 

Cormier referenced his lone NCAA finals loss to Sanderson when the two were at Oklahoma State and Iowa State, respectively.

Aaron Brooks (197) and Carter Starocci (174) each won their fourth NCAA titles when only five other wrestlers did it in history. That’s how dominant and special Saturday night was for Penn State.

“But it was insane to be in that building, watching all the pride (from the fans),” Cormier said. “There’s nothing like the environment of college sports. When you get to the NCAA tournament, there’s sections of fans with the universities and all the big universities have hundreds of people packed in one area, just going crazy when their athletes go out.

“It’s fun, but I tried to tell them no right away, I’ll go home and I don’t have to (broadcast). I don’t have to do this. They asked me to do this. And I’m just trying to help the sport that gave me everything.”

Cormier certainly added his UFC broadcasting flair to the coverage of the event. And as he pointed out, Sanderson’s team dominated once again and showed no signs of slowing down.

“Just going to be ready for next year,” Sanderson said after the tournament. “That’s what we do. We always think ahead preparing for the future. We’ll be back in the room on Monday. We love what we do. We love to train. We love the sport of wrestling. Happy for the guys. Obviously I say this every time but your heart and your mind, you just kind of expect to win and you believe and expect that your guys are going to win. So it’s the ones that don’t quite reach their goal that occupy your mind and your heart.

“I thought in the Finals, all of our guys wrestled really well. Bartlett wrestled really well. Just didn’t work out at the end. And Mesenbrink, he’s such a beast and wrestled really well. They had great tournaments. All the way through our lineup. So, we’re happy and we’ll just keep working.”