Stipe Miocic isn’t exactly feeling the love. The most dominant heavyweight champion in UFC history, the guy who’s better than a 2-1 favorite in a genuine super fight against the reigning light-heavyweight champion, still feels like people expect him to lose to Daniel Cormier in Saturday’s UFC 226 main event in Las Vegas.

“(It’s) just like every fight – I feel like everyone’s not really giving me a chance, like I’ve fought washed-up fighters or something like that,” Miocic told reporters during a media event in Los Angeles this week (watch it above).

Kind of sad, when you think about it. Especially coming from the guy who is literally the odds-on favorite to win.

Some of that might just be Miocic (18-2 MMA, 12-2 UFC) stoking his own fires. You know fighters. They love to feel like the underdog, like powerful forces are aligned against them and they must win just to prove everybody wrong. So what if that’s mostly a story they’ve made up in their own heads?

But with Miocic there might be some truth to it. Not necessarily the part about people expecting him to lose to Cormier (20-1 MMA, 9-1 UFC) in their pay-per-view headliner – Miocic is bigger, younger and would seem to have more ways to win than Cormier – but really it seems to be more based on a feeling.

As good as Miocic is, he’s somehow still not what we want in a heavyweight champion. This continues to be true even as he gives us many of the things we’ve always lamented not having in a heavyweight champion.

For the longest time the knock on the division was a lack of stability at the top. Maybe it was the shallowness of the talent pool, or else the inherent nature of big guys throwing punches in tiny gloves, but no one could seem to hold onto that strap for more than a fight or two. When it wasn’t their opponents doing them in, it was some bizarre twist of fate.

Brock Lesnar? Felled by diverticulitis. Frank Mir? Knocked off his motorcycle and straight into a downward spiral. Cain Velasquez? Never bothered to look up the elevation in Mexico City, apparently.

But then along comes Miocic, who wins the belt and actually keeps it, breaking a title defense record that was as old as the UFC. And it’s not like he’s squeaking by in close fights, either.

His last title defense was his first to go the distance, and even then there was no doubt at all that he’d thoroughly thumped Francis Ngannou, who was billed as the scariest heavyweight this side of Godzilla. Prior to that, you have to go all the way back to 2014 to find a Miocic fight that didn’t end with him standing over a vanquished, often unconscious foe.

What else do we want from the guy? What’s it going to take for him to finally receive the full faith and credit of the UFC heavyweight title?

Mainly it seems to be a personality problem. Maybe other champs could get by as the humble firefighter who refuses to quit his day job, but from the heavyweight champ we expect more. We want a man who’s larger than life. We want a swaggering destroyer of worlds.

When Miocic mumbles the same old line about walking out with the belt still strapped around his waist, it feels almost like he’s trying to bore us out of spite.

Fortunately for Miocic (and the UFC), you don’t have to do much to sell this fight. A cross-divisional battle with Cormier, who was undefeated in his time as a heavyweight and who’s since run through every 205-pounder not named Jon Jones? Yeah, that’s the sort of thing fight fans can’t resist.

For Cormier, a win would be historic. For Miocic, it’s merely a fantastic legacy-builder. Maybe that explains why he feels like people don’t want him to win. It’s such a better story if Cormier beats him.

Then again, it’s not like Miocic has ever cared too much about our preferred narratives before. Why should he start now?

For more on UFC 226, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.