With Cormier and Rockhold, Velasquez has all he needs at AKA for Werdum rematch

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Cain Velasquez is in the heart of a training camp that might wind up being the most important one of his career.

After a lengthy injury layoff, Velasquez returned to defend his heavyweight title in June 2015 against interim champ Fabricio Werdum at UFC 188 in Mexico City. The result wasn’t really that close, and Velasquez tapped to a guillotine choke in the third round.

At UFC 196, which takes place Feb. 6 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas with a main card on pay-per-view, Velasquez (13-2 MMA, 11-2 UFC) gets a rematch with Werdum (20-5-1 MMA, 8-2 UFC) – and he recently told MMAjunkie at his longtime American Kickboxing Academy training home that two teammates in particular are pretty much all he needs by his side while prepping for the fight.

UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, who is AKA’s wrestling coach, and new middleweight champ Luke Rockhold are, as usual, helping Velasquez in his quest to bring a third concurrent UFC title to the team.

“‘DC,’ just being a good workout partner in general, for everything, and obviously being one of my coaches, for him to have that knowledge of what I need to do to win this fight (is important),” Velasquez said. “And Luke, being a guy that’s tall and lengthy with strong kicks, a guy that has good hands and is hard to hit, and very strong jiu-jitsu – we have that as well.

“We have everything we need here. Sometimes we’ll bring in different guys, but pretty much with those two guys here even by themselves, it’s awesome just to have them.”

Velasquez first won the heavyweight title at UFC 121 when he stopped Brock Lesnar in the first round. But he lost it 13 months later to Junior Dos Santos. Two fights later, he had the belt back and defended it twice before dropping the fight to Werdum.

But it’s not just the 185-pound champ and 205-pound champ helping Velasquez try to get back the heavyweight title he’s held twice before. Velasquez said the culture of teamwork at AKA is important.

“Coming in here and having all the guys be selfless – if ‘DC’ is fighting, my focus is on him,” Velasquez said. “What does he need to work on? Making sure he has a body for his every workout – making myself available. That’s how me, ‘DC’ and Luke always do it. And the smaller guys, like (Josh) Thomson and ‘Neo’ (Noad Lahat), they all do the same thing with each other. They’re all making sure that they’re there for us.

“Something like that has brought us together and kept us strong.”

Check out the video with Velasquez above.

And for more on UFC 196, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.