Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino is the 145-pound elephant in the UFC’s newest room. The UFC’s newest champion, Germaine de Randamie, doesn’t seem ready to face that elephant yet.
Sooner or later, though, she’ll have to. The elephant demands nothing less.
“If you want to be world champ, you cannot choose [an] opponent. You have to fight anybody,” Justino said Monday on The MMA Hour broadcast with host Ariel Helwani. “You cannot run. And I felt those girls run from me, you know? It’s funny. It’s funny for me, but you cannot run forever. You have to fight. And now you have the belt.”
That belt is the inaugural UFC women’s featherweight title, which De Randamie won in controversial fashion Saturday at UFC 208 with a decision win over Holly Holm.
Women’s featherweight is Cyborg’s house, though, and everybody knows it. Justino is widely regarded as the best female MMA fighter in any galaxy or weight class—the UFC established the new division essentially as a showcase for Cyborg.
But when UFC brass approached her about a fight, Cyborg said she wanted to wait until the spring to allow her body to recover from two brutal cuts to 140 pounds—the catchweight at which she competed in her first two UFC contests. (Cyborg said Monday she walks around at about 170 pounds.)
The UFC chose not to wait, instead booking Holm versus De Randamie for UFC 208. Every observer assumed the winner was keeping the belt safe and comfortable until Cyborg could come and get it.
There’s just one problem: Cyborg (17-1-1) is darn scary. Without coming right out and admitting it, De Randamie acknowledged as much with her comments after the fight, saying she needed surgery to fix the hand she injured three fights ago against Larissa Pacheco in 2015.
“I want to fight everybody,” De Randamie told broadcaster Joe Rogan in the cage after the fight (h/t Marc Raimondi of MMA Fighting). “If Cris Cyborg is the one I have to fight, I’ll fight her. Right now, I really need surgery on my hand. I’ll get surgery on my hand, and we’ll see after.”
On Monday, De Randamie didn’t seem as concerned about the hand when, in an Instagram post, she called for an immediate rematch with Holm.
That wasn’t lost on Cyborg. Speaking Monday, Cyborg took it in stride. She’s used to it.
“When they go inside the cage, they know,” she said. “They know this fight, you’re gonna fight Cyborg. …It sounds funny for her to say ‘yeah, I have an injury, I need surgery,’ and then she says [she wants a] rematch with Holly Holm. You know, but I don’t think [the rematch] is gonna happen.”
In the meantime, Cyborg is awaiting a verdict from the United States Anti-Doping Agency regarding a recent positive drug test.
Per ESPN’s Brett Okamoto, both Cyborg and UFC president Dana White have expressed optimism that she could receive a therapeutic use exemption for spironolactone, the banned substance in question, and thus would not receive a suspension or other disciplinary action. Cyborg has asserted she has a legitimate medical need for the drug and that it was prescribed to her by a physician.
Cyborg said Monday she hopes to receive a ruling from USADA “soon.”
In the meantime, she’ll continue to loom over De Randamie and the entire women’s featherweight division.
“I wasn’t able to get in the cage this weekend because of my health,” she said Monday. “If I can’t fight like Cyborg, I don’t want [to fight]…It doesn’t matter if I fight there or fight later. It’s going to be my time. Everybody knows who the champ [is] at 145.”
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