Just how similar are AKA teammates Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier?

It’s not unreasonable to look at UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez and American Kickboxing Academy teammate Daniel Cormier and come away thinking they’re two slightly different versions of the same fighter.

They both came to MMA from wrestling. They’re both smaller heavyweights who find themselves routinely swatting up at the faces of the division’s giants. They’ve both built reputations as highly successful, high-pace fighters who can smash opponents with power punches or take them down at will.

But when they squared off in weekly sparring sessions for their respective UFC 166 bouts, did it really feel like looking in a mirror? Are they really as similar in practice as we sometimes assume they are in theory?

As both Velasquez and Cormier told MMAjunkie.com in interviews for this weekend’s special UFC 166 pullout in USA TODAY (on newsstands Friday), not necessarily.

“Technically, I think Cain is the better boxer of the two of us,” Cormier said. “His combinations are always really tight, and he’s in good position, whereas sometimes I tend to wing punches because I just want to hit people so bad.”

According to Velasquez, he’s learned to keep his punches tighter because “when I get out wide like [Cormier] does … that’s when I tend to get hit.”

When it comes to wrestling, both agree that Cormier – an Olympian who captained the U.S. men’s wrestling team at the 2008 games in Beijing – has the edge. He serves as the head wrestling coach at AKA, teaching the craft to his peers on the fight team as well as to a group of kids who show up each week for Cormier’s own brand of high-intensity instruction.

Still, Cormier said, despite his expertise on the mats, “Cain just has that pace. No other heavyweight keeps a pace like that.”

While preparing for Saturday’s pay-per-view fights at Houston’s Toyota Center, Cormier said, he and Velasquez did “about 80 percent” of their overall prep together – essentially everything except strength and conditioning. Early on in camp they might spar several times a week, and then taper off to once a week as the fight gets closer.

“Then on Saturdays we get together to wrestle,” Cormier said. “Just me and him.”

The end result is that they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses as well as anyone possibly could. And, as Velasquez put it, “Especially now when we’re both in the best condition we can be in, it makes things even more competitive in the gym.”

But according to Cormier, for all their camaraderie in the gym and the hours they’ve spent sweating and bleeding side-by-side, on fight day they’ll both retreat to their own separate bubbles. Call it part of the mental preparation, if you like. As they get closer to that time when they’ll have to be alone in the cage with only their opponent, they also get accustomed to being alone inside their own minds, but in their own separate ways.

“When it comes to fighting, we are pretty similar,” Cormier said. “We both just want to win so bad. But outside the gym, I don’t really know how he prepares. On fight day, I don’t bother Cain. I won’t see him until we’re there getting ready to go out. I try to give him his space because I know what kind of space I need.”

If all goes as planned on Saturday night, with both AKA heavyweights competing in back-to-back bouts, they might also get a chance to find out what it’s like to celebrate together.

For more on UFC 166, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.