Cris “Cyborg” Justino made her long-awaited debut in the UFC on Saturday at UFC 198 and left no doubt as to whether she belonged. The Curitiba, Brazil, native flattened Leslie Smith in 81 seconds, and while Smith protested what she felt was a premature stoppage, the outcome of the fight was never really in doubt.
Despite getting that first UFC win under her belt, Cyborg’s future is unclear.
Can she make the 135-pound limit and compete in the women’s bantamweight division in the UFC? Will the UFC continue to find opponents for her at the 140-pound catchweight she successfully made at UFC 198? Or will she go back to Invicta FC and defend her featherweight belt?
Most importantly, how does Cyborg stack up with the competition in the UFC?
Bleacher Report’s Steven Rondina and Patrick Wyman have answers to all of these questions.
Patrick Wyman: We saw clearly what Cyborg is capable of in her demolition of Smith. To me, what’s been lost in all of the talk about her over the last several years is her sheer technical skill as a striker.
She’s a smooth and skilled counterpuncher with great balance and creativity in her combination work. Each of the four- and five-punch sequences with which she blasted Smith started as counters in the pocket, where Cyborg has the confidence and skill to move her head and come back with a technical but powerful body-head combination.
Married to Cyborg’s exceptional physical strength, speed and crushing power, that technical skill makes her a handful for any opponent to deal with. Moreover, it’s a particular package of skill and athletic gifts that stands out in comparison to the opponents she’ll be facing should she continue in the UFC.
So, Steven, is there anybody fighting at 135 pounds in the UFC who has what it takes to deal with Cyborg?
Steven Rondina: While 99 percent of what we’ve seen from Cyborg over the years has been the complete annihilation of the competition, there is one woman, and one woman alone, who made Cyborg look vulnerable: Dutch kickboxer Jorina Baars.
Baars and Cyborg faced off in a kickboxing match under the Lion Fight banner back in 2014. Despite a gutsy effort, Cyborg was repeatedly caught with front kicks and jabs moving in, struggled to establish herself up close and wound up taking a clear-cut unanimous decision loss.
Kickboxing and MMA are obviously different sports, but we have seen one woman do brilliant work punishing opponents that try to come in on her. That woman, of course, is Holly Holm.
Holm took the title off Ronda Rousey at UFC 193 by landing hard counters, avoiding the clinch, slipping back to range and repeating until it was no longer necessary. That’s precisely what somebody would need to do to beat Cyborg.
Now, that would be an amazingly difficult fight for Holm. While fans saw Holm floor Rousey with a head kick, she doesn’t even have a fraction of the pure power that Cyborg does and, given what we saw out of her at UFC 196, she’d be at a major disadvantage on the ground.
Still, Holm is the most capable of beating Cyborg in my book based on her technically solid striking. Agree? Disagree?
PW: Yes, on paper, I agree that Holm is the most difficult matchup for Cyborg. However, I’d still favor Cyborg in that fight. Why? Technical pressure.
Unlike Rousey, Cyborg has the tools to force her opponent toward the fence. She uses her jab and tight footwork to take away her opponent’s ability to move to her left and then her powerful right kick to catch the opponent as she attempts to circle out toward the right. The only possible direction to go is straight backward, and once her opponent hits the fence, Cyborg’s vicious combinations fly fast and furious.
Rousey wanted to force Holm toward the fence, where it’s easier to move into the clinch, but she didn’t have this ability to corral Holm safely and technically. That’s why Holm was able to tag Rousey over and over.
The former champion relies heavily on her straight-line speed to bull-rush, doesn’t cut her opponent’s movement off with footwork and doesn’t have a kicking game to punish her opponent for trying to circle off. Rousey never moves her head as she throws punches or slides into the pocket, and Cyborg excels at doing that. Holm wouldn’t get any free shots against Cyborg without the danger of eating counters in return.
Holm’s combination of evasive footwork, straight punches and rangy kicks makes her a tough matchup for Cyborg. The now-former champ is quick and physically strong. Her pace is excellent, and she won’t get tired over a five-round fight.
Still, Holm would have to execute the game plan she used against Rousey against a much more dangerous striker with a stronger ability to force her toward the fence, where Cyborg can unload combinations without fear. That’s a tall order.
What about the division’s other strong strikers? Do you give Valentina Shevchenko or Germaine de Randamie much of a shot against Cyborg?
SR: I’m not really sold on Shevchenko yet. There might be something there, but it takes more than a split-decision win over Sarah Kaufman for me to really start buying into someone, never mind giving them a chance against Cyborg.
De Randamie is a different story, though. I’ve had the Iron Lady on my underrated list for a long while now, and she showed just how devastating her striking is last week when she destroyed Anna Elmose with a series of knees to the body.
She has a smoothness to her entries that is an absolute treat to watch (seriously folks, just watch how she moved in the first minute of her UFC 185 fight) and unlike Holm, she has real pop in her hands. Could she beat Cyborg? I wouldn’t necessarily bet the house on her, but she’s the only woman other than Holm that I could see surviving a stand-up contest with the Invicta featherweight champ.
But of course, Patrick, the fans clicked onto this article with one thing in mind: They want to know what we think about Cyborg vs. Rousey.
Naturally, with Rousey coming off a big loss and Cyborg coming off a big win, the perception among fans is that Cyborg would tear Rousey in half and throw her into the stands. Do you think it would pan out that way?
PW: I’m not sure that perception is unwarranted, but let’s dig into the particulars of the matchup.
From the perspective of game-planning, Holm, a dedicated outside striker, had a less complex task in front of her than Cyborg. The Albuquerque native could simply stick straight punches in Rousey’s face and angle off whenever Rousey bull-rushed her. She didn’t need or want to exchange in the pocket.
There was no incentive for Holm to stay in the clinch, either, so her entire focus whenever Rousey got close was on disengaging and re-establishing distance as quickly as possible.
By contrast, Cyborg does her best work in the pocket and yes, the clinch. While she throws powerful kicks and has a nice jab, those are tools to help her safely and quickly get into her preferred distance, not a means to keep her opponent away.
Cyborg likes to come forward, and that places her in harm’s way with an opponent in Rousey who desperately wants to get into the clinch.
It’s possible to beat an in-fighter like Rousey in the pocket, but it requires extremely tight pivots to create advantageous angles, lots of small steps to establish subtle gradations of distance and enough skill in the clinch to survive when the opponent does get there. We shouldn’t underestimate the level of discipline required to make all of that work without panicking, either.
The question, then, is whether Cyborg has both the skill and the cool under pressure to make that work. Can she make those small adjustments with her feet, be skillful enough in the clinch to shuck Rousey off and stay calm to avoid gassing?
For me, the answer to all of that is yes, and I would pick her to knock out Rousey. I think she’s technical enough in the clinch, cool enough under pressure and capable of honing her footwork to the level to pull all that off. Where do you stand, Steven?
SR: For a long time, I felt like Rousey would take out Cyborg, probably without much trouble. As you alluded to, the first step towards losing a fight with Rousey is literally taking a step towards her. Once she gets that first underhook? Clinch, trip, scramble, armbar.
As time passes, though, the odds favor Cyborg more and more.
Since 2012, Rousey has trained for fights with Liz Carmouche, Sara McMann, Cat Zingano and so on. Cyborg, meanwhile, has trained for Rousey. Nobody else. Cyborg acknowledged as much at the UFC 198 post-fight press conference (warning: link contains NSFW language) and, given how soft her Invicta FC competition has been, there’s little reason to doubt her claims.
Cyborg would still need to tread carefully against a finisher as dynamic as Rousey, but at this point, it’s her fight to lose.
With Rousey and Holm in the books, I’d be remiss to leave the reigning, defending, undisputed UFC bantamweight champion of the world out of the discussion. So what do you make of Miesha Tate’s chances?
PW: Wow, that’s tough to call.
On paper, you’d have to favor Cyborg over Tate by a substantial margin. The Invicta champion is much bigger, stronger, more technical as a striker, infinitely more powerful and has strong takedown defense.
But isn’t that the story of pretty much every Tate fight?
Tate’s whole career has been built on intangibles that don’t show up on paper. She’s exceptionally durable, has endless cardio and makes intelligent adjustments over the course of the fight. If she can get on top, and she almost always finds a way despite her underwhelming speed and often-poor takedown shots, she’s savvy and nearly impossible to shake off.
While I’d favor Cyborg to crack Tate’s granite chin and finish by knockout, there would always be the strong possibility that Tate could find a way to weather the storm, take Cyborg down and either control her or finish on the mat. Tate has done it too many times to count her out.
All of these matchups are hypothetical, and they bring us to the question of what the UFC should do with Cyborg.
She successfully made 140 pounds—139, in fact—and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she could cut another three to make 136. Even if that’s not going to happen, the 140-pound catchweight remains an option, or the UFC could just go all-in and have her fight at 145.
Which of those options seems best to you? Or should she just go back to Invicta and defend her featherweight title?
SR: First and foremost, the UFC can’t let her go back to Invicta. They just can’t. There was a measurable buzz entering UFC 198 regarding Cyborg’s UFC debut, and seeing her smash Smith certainly didn’t hurt matters.
The UFC needs to keep her on the main roster. As for what they do with her…well, that’s where things get tricky.
Despite what color commentator Brian Stann said on the UFC broadcast, Cyborg’s cut down to 140 pounds wasn’t actually clear sailing through calm waters, as Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting pointed out ahead of the weigh-ins:
It was a visibly difficult process and, honestly, it would be immensely hypocritical on the UFC’s part to demand she drop any further at a time when it is going to great lengths to make weight-cutting safer (and even more difficult) for fighters.
If they keep her as a special catchweight attraction, it’s unlikely Cyborg fights anyone in the Rousey-Tate-Holm trifecta next. Those three will be fighting over the UFC title for a while and, unless Cyborg throws a wrench into that by somehow getting down to 135, that’s not going to change.
If the UFC keeps her at 140, or lets her fight at 145, they would be well served to give her more stylistically favorable opponents and build her up as an unstoppable monster. That would be the best way to either generate hype for a Cyborg vs. Rousey superfight, or turn Cyborg into a potential replacement for whenever Rousey hangs up her gloves.
PW: You hit the nail on the head when you called Cyborg an attraction. People want to see her fight, whether they’re cheering her or hoping she’ll lose.
It’s a rare gift, and not one the UFC can afford to pass up with Rousey on the shelf and a rocky relationship with Conor McGregor. There’s simply too much money to be made on the bigger platform for the UFC to let her go back to Invicta, and it behooves the UFC to do whatever it takes to make her stick around.
That’s where we part company. It’s worth doing some damage to the Rousey-Tate-Holm triumvirate and therefore the women’s bantamweight division if it means giving Cyborg a fight in the UFC.
In the worst-case scenario, with Cyborg destroying one or more of them inside a round, you now have a fighter you can legitimately bill as an unstoppable force and a truly one-of-a-kind attraction at the top of pay-per-view cards. On the other hand, what if one of them beats Cyborg? Then you have Rousey, Tate or Holm as a giant-killer, and some of the interest we’ve seen in Cyborg will rub off on the victor.
Whether the UFC sticks to feeding her favorable opponents or ups the ante with a big-name challenger, Cyborg has proven that she belongs in the world’s biggest promotion.
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