Ronda Rousey and Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos are on a collision course.
The top two female stars have exchanged jabs on Twitter and in interviews. Will the social media trash talk eventually lead to a showdown between champions?
In an interview with Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker weighed in on quite possibly the “biggest Strikeforce bout of the year.”
I think [a bout between Ronda and Cyborg] is gonna be inevitable. I think that fight will happen at some point. We’re just waiting for Cyborg to get off her suspension, but that conversation will happen once she’s back and ready to fight because her and Ronda at 135, I mean, that might be the highest rated show on Showtime for the year or for the past fights we’ve done.
Cyborg was suspended and stripped of her Strikeforce women’s featherweight title in January after testing positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol.
With Cyborg out of the picture, Rousey ascended the female ranks to not only capture the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title, but she has also become the new face of women’s MMA.
She has been a perfect 5-0 in her professional career, and all of her fights have ended in the first round by armbar.
With that said, Rousey has never faced anyone like Cyborg, who is known for tossing grown men around in training camp.
During the live broadcast in December for Strikeforce: Melendez vs. Masvidal, Strikeforce commentator and MMA legend Pat Miletich put it best: “You don’t know how hard a woman can hit, until you’ve been hit by Cyborg.”
Coker seems to lean along the same lines. While he’s been impressed with Rousey’s handiwork up to this point, it’s tough to bet against the nightmare that is Cyborg.
Ronda has always delivered. That armbar is unbelievable, and she proved with Miesha [Tate], she’s proven with the other girls that she can fight a kickboxer, she can fight a wrestler. Fighting Cyborg? That’s a whole other level.
Before she meets Cyborg, Rousey first has other work to attend to.
She is expected to defend her title for the first time against former champion Sarah Kaufman later this summer.
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