Cristiane Santos is back in business, making a successful debut with the Kansas City-based all-female MMA promotion, Invicta Fighting Championships.
Earning an aggressive first-round technical knockout victory against Australian fighter Fiona Muxlow, there was no mercy given by “Cyborg” Santos as she pummeled her opponent from bell to bell over three minutes and 46 seconds.
With the victory, Cyborg secures herself a shot at becoming Invicta FC’s first featherweight champion.
That match is planned to take place in a few months, as Cyborg will assumedly compete in a rematch against one-time Strikeforce foe Marloes Coenen, whom Cyborg defeated in January 2010 during her first title defense.
This marked Cyborg’s first MMA bout since December 17, 2011, when she defeated Hiroko Yamanaka in a third consecutive successful defense of the Strikeforce Women’s Featherweight Championship.
Unfortunately, the Brazilian’s 11th straight win was overturned into a “no contest” following a positive test for anabolic steroids, resulting in a year-long suspension.
Cyborg had recently been in talks to set up a superfight with UFC women’s bantamweight star Ronda Rousey, but negotiations broke down when Cyborg (and her manager, Tito Ortiz) insisted that cutting down to 135 pounds was out of the question. Rousey also refused to move up to 140 pounds for a catchweight bout, prompting Cyborg to call her rival a “bitch” in a heated message over Instagram.
But unfortunately for Ortiz and Cyborg, even UFC president Dana White stated that a fight at 140 pounds wouldn’t make sense, with Rousey as the 135-pound champion and the UFC currently not hosting any other female weight classes:
It’s not a title fight. If that’s what [Cyborg] is willing to do is go to 140, let’s let Ronda defend her title a few times and see if Ronda wants to go to 140. If I know Ronda, she probably would anyway, so let’s see what happens. But if [Cyborg] wants to fight for a title and have a title fight, she has to go to 135 pounds.
A fight at 140 would be a fan fight because everybody wants to see it, but it’s not one of those fights that makes sense.
Eventually, Cyborg requested her release from the UFC altogether, seemingly abandoning any notion of fighting Rousey in the future.
Moreover, not a single mention of the UFC’s women’s bantamweight champion was made during Cyborg’s post-fight interview, as she simply thanked God and the Kansas City crowd, who cheered the former champion in her return to the sport.
McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist. His work has appeared in NVision, PC World, Macworld, GamePro, 1UP, MMA Mania & The L.A. Times.
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