Ronda Rousey and Cris “Cyborg” Justino are going to fight each other.
If you’re the kind of person who insists on reading the last page of the book first, that’s really all you need to know. The rest of this stuff—the public finger pointing, the promoter’s denials, the name-calling, the endless weight debate—is all just background noise.
Eventually, too much money will be on the table to let this fight go unmade. UFC President Dana White has already estimated it would do 2.5 million buys on pay-per-view, which would make it far and away the biggest bout in company history.
White is nothing if not optimistic. If it did even half that number, Rousey vs. Justino would be an absolute slam dunk, a no-brainer for all involved. So, perhaps the only real questions are how soon it will happen and whether both fighters will still be in the prime of their careers once it finally does.
Even before the war of words intensified this week, there was significant evidence to suggest this was the fight Rousey wanted all along. Close readers of the MMA tea leaves might even question if all this public squabbling is part of a long con, with Rousey and her UFC bosses biding their time until the perfect moment presents itself.
What evidence?
Well, for starters, we have Rousey’s own words.
Way back in 2011, she pretty much told MMA Junkie’s John Morgan this was the plan.
This was when she was still in Strikeforce, still fighting at 145 pounds and had yet to win her first title. Her career was in its infancy, but people were already asking Rousey about fighting Cyborg, who was the Strikeforce featherweight champion. Even back then, she knew the fight “needed to happen” and knew when it did, it needed to be big:
I think it’s just too soon marketing-wise. I know that I’m capable of beating any woman in the world at any moment, but I think that if me and Cris ‘Cyborg’ were to fight today, I don’t think that many people would be hyped up about it or be looking forward to it. That’s why I’ve been so adamant about moving down [and] getting the belt at 135 first, so when a fight between me and Cris ‘Cyborg’ does eventually happen, it will be a big deal.
Fast-forward to 2015 and Rousey’s life has changed dramatically. She’s no longer willing to meet Cyborg at featherweight or anywhere in between. As recently as this week, however, it was clear she still wants this fight, so long as Justino can meet the hard-and-fast stipulation that it take place at 135 pounds (NSFW language below).
“I would like me kicking her ass [to] be my retirement fight,” Rousey wrote on Tuesday during her Reddit AMA (h/t MMA Fighting’s Marc Raimondi), “but whether she steps up [takes the fight and makes weight] or not I’ll walk away undefeated and [live] happily ever after regardless.”
As you can see, the tenor of the discussion has changed since Rousey first sat down with Morgan as an inexperienced up-and-comer years ago. She’s the dominant champion now and is comfortably ensconced as the UFC’s biggest star. These days, it’s up to Cyborg to chase a superfight with her, not the other way around.
Still, it’s hard not to notice things have played out pretty much exactly as Rousey laid them out in that initial interview. Mostly, life is all still going according to her plan—and that plan included fighting Cyborg from the beginning.
Here’s how Morgan described Rousey’s long-term strategy in 2011:
Rousey, currently a featherweight, believes the best way to help build interest for the matchup is to drop to 135-pounds and take on current champ (and budding Twitter rival) Miesha Tate. In Rousey’s eyes, the process would allow her to gain valuable in-cage experience, as well as increase her visibility by wrapping a belt around her waist.
Check, check and double-check.
Rousey did in fact beat Tate to become Strikeforce bantamweight champion three months later and was promoted to UFC champ when the larger company absorbed Strikeforce in 2013. Since then, she has gone on a six-fight reign of terror in the Octagon.
In the process you could say she has “increased her visibility” just a little bit, too.
These days she has a lot more to lose. If Rousey is eventually going to put all that on the line against Justino, you can’t really blame her for making sure it’s worth her while.
Up until recently, it seemed like she and her UFC bosses were content to slow-play all this superfight talk. Despite already having Cyborg under contract, the fight company hasn’t been in a rush to make the fight.
Perhaps this too was the strategy all along: to let Rousey clean out the 135-pound division before turning to Cyborg. We’ve already been told that Rousey is headed for a third bout with Tate near the end of the year. Matchups with Holly Holm or Amanda Nunes could be on deck after that.
But it’s possible the timeline for the Justino bout was unexpectedly accelerated recently. Everyone, including Rousey and her handlers, were likely taken aback by the sheer volume of mainstream media coverage she received around her destruction of Bethe Correia at UFC 190.
In the wake of that bout, Rousey’s star is at an all-time high—and so, weirdly, is Cyborg’s modicum of celebrity. Both fighters appeared on SportsCenter the week after UFC 190, and the mainstream media seemed on the verge of asking the tough questions about when Rousey was going to get a stiffer test from a legitimately dangerous opponent.
Things heated up even more this week, when Cyborg’s camp said the UFC had been in touch about a possible date in December. White vehemently denied those claims, but the whole escapade made an awful lot of smoke for there to be no fire underneath.
Rousey sounded off on Monday during her AMA (more NSFW language), saying she thought Justino was “just waiting to be offered enough money to get her ass kicked (‘cuz she knows she’ll get her ass kicked).”
Then Cyborg took to Twitter to turn Rousey’s own latest marketing gimmick against her (even more NSFW language):
So, yeah, business is starting to pick up.
Fact is, many of the past impediments to this bout are beginning to fall away.
For a time, it seemed Cyborg’s 2011 positive steroid test might be an obstacle. However, with each day that passes, the failure slips further into history. The UFC is certainly not above booking fighters with performance-enhancing drugs in their pasts in high-profile spots, and with the organization’s new, more stringent drug testing policy, we could be as certain as possible Justino would roll into this fight clean.
It should also be noted the fighter passed her most recent drug test, after a defense of her Invicta FC featherweight title on July 9.
The single biggest sticking point—Cyborg’s weight—also seems to be less an issue now than a year or even six months ago. This week, Justino’s nutritionist guaranteed she could make 135 pounds as early as December 5.
Rousey cosigned on that assessment, in her own special way.
“The delay is all about money, not her weight,” she wrote on Reddit. “She made 145 pumped full of steroids. She can healthily make 135 without them.”
If we can take Cyborg’s camp at its word that the UFC put out initial feelers about a possible end-of-the-year event—and, really, why would they lie about that?—it’s possible the wheels are already in motion. We know the fight company is targeting Jose Aldo’s long-awaited fight with Conor McGregor for December 12, and early speculation said Rousey’s next fight (against Tate or someone else) would wind up on that card, too.
White now says that’s not true. Even if it doesn’t happen in December though, a meeting between Rousey and Justino is going to happen.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even next year.
But eventually.
If weight isn’t an issue, drug testing is better than ever and both these athletes are currently under contract, the major hurdles are already cleared.
Money? Money is the least of our worries here. If everything goes off correctly, there should be more than enough money to go around.
Bottom line, it’s unthinkable the UFC, Rousey and Justino would leave the pile of cash this bout will generate on the table. They’re just waiting to make sure the pile stacks high enough to make it the best option for Rousey and the organization.
And let’s be clear that time is certainly on Rousey’s side here. The longer she waits to make this fight—the longer she “builds interest” as Morgan wrote in 2011—the more we all want to see it. The more trash talk, the more bitter the feud, the more appearances on SportsCenter, the better.
She’s only 28 years old, after all. Every time we see her step into the cage, she gets better. The longer she waits, the more stridently she insists Cyborg—who is now 30—make the bantamweight limit, the more the deck becomes stacked in her favor.
Rousey will win a few more fights, and her popularity will continue to grow. Justino will exterminate a few more challengers in Invicta FC. They will continue to snipe at each other in the press.
Then, when the rest of the women’s bantamweight division is duly tapped out, when everybody involved is certain this fight will be “big” enough to take the risk, it’s going to happen.
There’s simply no other way for the story to end.
We know this, because Rousey already told us exactly how it was going to go down.
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