Dana White wants a Nunes vs. Cyborg superfight next, but Cris Cyborg has other ideas.
Dana White kicked off our 2018 with a wide ranging interview given to Yahoo! Sports, dropping news about Conor McGregor, Robbie Lawler, and Cris Cyborg. Cyborg, according to White, will be fighting women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes next. Considering there aren’t really any interesting contenders at 135 right now and all of 2 women signed up for 145, that doesn’t sound like a terrible idea.
Unless you ask Cris Cyborg.
She had originally stated she’d fight whoever the UFC put in front of her, but now she’s gone on her website to say she doesn’t think Nunes deserves a title shot at 145. At this point, she’d like to face a real 145 pound opponent, please and thank you.
Instead of offering a fight to the next Featherweight contender available, Holly Holm was given the bout despite going 1-3 over her past 4 fights. The matchup proved popular with the fans, and our styles eventually made for Fight Of The Night, however Holm was given a title shot over girls who had been fighting at 145lbs and winning because she was more popular, and not because she was the next contender in line.
Having re-established myself as the WORLD CHAMPION at 145lbs I feel it is my obligation to fight the #1 contender at 145lbs in my next fight. I have fought 4 consecutive fights against girls who have come up from 135lbs to fight me, because they were “SUPERFIGHTS” for the fans. Besides Lina Lansburg (I fought her at 140) none of these girls had been fighting at featherweight.
As a World Champion it is important that you face the #1 contender. That is what makes it sport and not entertainment, otherwise what are the girls fighting at 145lbs training to work towards if they know they will never be given a title shot even if they become the best in the world? I have a responsibility to the sport to ensure that when I retire the 145lbs division continues to exist, and it is because of that I want my next fight to be against a contender from the featherweight division that has fought at 145lbs within the last year.
Look, Cyborg’s not wrong: it’s been ridiculous how the UFC has been pilfering from the 135 pound division to fill slots at 145, instead of signing talent at 145 pounds. But that’s the reality of where we are right now: because they haven’t been signing women’s featherweight fighters, there are no contenders at that weight.
That mis-management extends down to the women’s bantamweight division as well, where the matchmaking needed to push new talent up to the top of the division hasn’t happened, leaving Amanda Nunes without any competition to face either.
So at this point, we have to make lemonade out of these lemons. Put Cyborg and Nunes against each other and take the next 6 to 9 months to get these divisions rolling again. A superfight between the two is the biggest thing that can happen, and hopefully in the meantime the UFC might actually sign a few featherweights and separate the wheat from the chaff at 135.