Daniel Cormier is currently fourth on the UFC’s pound-for-pound list, holds the light heavyweight championship and is in the conversation for being on the Mount Rushmore of MMA fighters. The former Olympic wrestler has just a single official loss on his MMA record and on Saturday night in Las Vegas at UFC 226 he could become the second fighter in UFC history to actively hold two belts at the same time. The only other person to achieve that feat is someone named Conor McGregor.

Unfortunately for Cormier, there are a few gigantic obstacles on his path to being considered an all-time great like Demetrius Johnson, Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre or Fedor Emelianenko.

The first is UFC 226’s clear and present danger: heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic. The quiet goliath is the most dominant heavyweight in UFC history and is taller, heavier and has arms that are eight inches longer than Cormier’s. He’s capable of knocking foes out with half-sized punches. Normally, little inside punches look good in the eyes of the judges but do little actual damage. That is not the case with Miocic. He’s so powerful that he doesn’t need to wind up and torque his body and shoulder to create huge looping power shots like, say, Chuck Liddell.

So, in the present tense, Cormier needs to beat Miocic and take his belt in order to be considered a true all-timer. Cormier then has to defeat history itself. The past, in this case, being a man named Jon Jones.

Jones, the mercurial and troubled former light heavyweight champion has beat Cormier twice. The first came at UFC 182 in 2015. The fight was the definition of a five-round war, but Jones definitely came out on top. Cormier’s second loss to Jones came at UFC 214 on July 29, 2017. It was close right up until the point where Jones slammed his shin into Cormier’s face midway through the third round and calmly finished off his nemesis.

But Jones’ post-weigh-in drug test came back positive for Turinabol, an old-school anabolic steroid made famous by East German weightlifters. When Jones’ B sample came back positive as well, his victory was deemed a no-contest by the California State Athletic Commission and the loss was stricken from Cormier’s record.

Unbelievably, the positive Turinabol test was the second time Jones got caught using PEDs before a fight with Cormier. The first instance occurred two days before their headlining fight at UFC 200, in July 2016. In that case, Jones’ positive test came out before the fight happened so the bout was canceled before any fists were thrown. In the aftermath, Jones famously blamed the screw up on “a damned sex pill” but the fact of the matter is that two banned substances — clomiphene, which is used at the end of a steroid cycle, and letrozole, which treats so-call “man boobs” — were found in his system and he was given a year-long suspension from USADA.

Jones’ multiple steroid revelations should have stained him forever and elevated Cormier to GOAT-like levels because his singular loss was to a known steroid cheat. In this theoretical world, Cormier would be undefeated when competing on an even playing field. He’d be 13-0 as a young heavyweight in promotions like Strikeforce and 7-0 as a mature UFC light heavyweight.

Fighting is not like baseball with its ballyhooed history or the Olympics with its “peace on Earth and goodwill towards men” vibes. Like football, fighting is about people hurting each other and fans of both sports don’t seem to care as much if their heroes get popped using PEDs. Thus, the record books have been changed but Cormier’s fights with Jones remain very real in the world’s collective memory. He is, forever, going to be second best to Jones in most people’s minds.

However, on Saturday night, Cormier has the chance to write a new narrative which is both a giant middle finger to Jones and a possible avenue towards one-upping him in the sport’s levels of greatness. That’s because in the days between beating Cormier a second time and being branded a steroid cheat, rumors swirled that Jones planned to move up to heavyweight and take on WWE man-beast Brock Lesnar. Those talks stopped when Jones’ positive test triggered a possible four-year suspension, although USADA is yet to formally suspend Jones.

Cormier can get there first, and he knows it. Step one is beating Miocic. Step two is convincing Lesnar to get back in the real fight game. Step three is beating Lesnar.

And with that, Cormier could ride off into retirement with a championship belt on each shoulder content in the knowledge that he’d stolen Jones’ dream.

Or, Cormier could lose to Miocic and retire on the spot.

UFC 226, therefore, is Cormier’s reckoning.