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“There’s a fight inside your head every time you take a shower. The week after that fight was a difficult moment.”
One of the most difficult moments of Cris Cyborg’s career was when the Brazilian took a post-fight shower after her 51-second knockout loss to Amanda Nunes at UFC 232.
Cyborg, real name Cristiane Justino, says vivid images of the knockout kept flashing through her head every time she closed her eyes in the shower, and that she found herself in an internal battle for an entire week following the fight. “One side says something, the other side says something else,” Cyborg said.
“The worst thing there is after you lose a fight is to take a shower,” she told MMA Fighting in a recent interview. “You take a shower by yourself and that flash comes in your head all the time, and then you start to question (yourself). There’s a fight inside your head every time you take a shower. The week after that fight was a difficult moment.”
Cyborg was unable to negotiate a rematch with Nunes and the 34-year-old decided to part ways with the UFC to sign with Bellator MMA in 2019. Cyborg captured the Bellator women’s featherweight title in her promotional debut, scoring a fourth-round TKO victory over Julia Budd at Bellator 238 earlier this year. The multi-promotion MMA champ would like to make her boxing debut sometime later this year.