Yesterday video of Cyborg’s striking coach Jason Parillo slapping her in the face surfaced. Here’s the story behind it.
Cris Cyborg is one tough woman. So tough, in fact, that she takes a hard slap to the face from her striking coach Jason Parillo before every fight. Cyborg put out video of the tradition yesterday, and the slap was enough to make our eyes water watching it.
The pre-fight bitchslap isn’t something new in the MMA world. Clay Guida used to take a few slaps from his heavyweight brother before stepping into the cage. And Melvin Manhoef is also known for getting manhandled by his coach “Big” Mike. But Cris and Jason put their own spin on it: she never knows when it’s coming.
“It’s a slap that I’m not expecting,” Cyborg revealed in an interview with Combate (h/t MMA Junkie). “He’s talking to me and then out of nowhere he gives me this slap. But he does it to wake me up, to see if I’m really there.”
”We’ve been working together for a while and he always does it. It’s not something that I particularly like. Actually, at the time it makes me want to punch him in the mouth! It’s something that’s our own, we always do it and it always helps wake me up.”
There’s certainly no holding back on Parillo’s part, but when you’re about to step into the cage I guess a quick preview never hurt anyone. And even the slap we saw from UFC 219 didn’t even make Cyborg flinch. She’d take those solid nerves into the cage and dominate Holly Holm across five rounds for the decision on all three judge’s scorecards.