Cris Cyborg wants to fight Ronda Rousey. The Brazilian said so much on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, but the desire comes with a catch. Cyborg has never fought lower than 145 pounds, and she says it would be impossible to meet Rousey at 135 pounds, the division that Rousey currently reigns over.
So, she said, she would like to either fight Rousey at 145, or at a catch weight of 140 pounds.
On Wednesday, in no uncertain terms, Rousey said that the request is a non-starter. Blasting Cyborg for her previous steroid use, Rousey demanded that any fight between them would take place at 135.
In an interview on TSN Radio’s “The MMA Report with John Pollock,” the outspoken bantamweight champion, who already has her hands full with Sarah Kaufman on Saturday night, spoke hypothetically about Cyborg’s challenge.
She did not hold back on her feelings.
“If she wants to fight me than she is going to have to find a way to come down to 135,” she said. “We’ll see how she does in a fair fight for once in her life. She has a history of coming in overweight to fights and I wouldn’t doubt that if we agreed to some sort of catchweight at 140, she’d show up at 145 anyway and be like ‘ah whatever, fight or not.’ She’s done this many times before. I don’t owe her anything. She’s completely defamed, and anything she’s ever done is nothing because she is a big old cheater and she’s been doping her whole life. And I think part of the reason why people like Dana [White] think there is a lack of depth in all these divisions is because this girl is doping and making everybody look like they aren’t in her league. And I think the reason why people look at women’s MMA like that was because of her. She is nothing but a detriment to the sport and the only positive she could play is an Ivan Drago bad guy that gets beat to hell by a Rocky. So no, she can come down and fight me at 135 because I have a whole line of other people that want to fight me already and I don’t owe her anything.
“I don’t need to come up and it’s just like, why would I even want to come up to her weight?” she continued. “Stop doping, lose the weight. She can either do the drugs and fight me at 135 and have the drugs be just as much a detriment as a help to her during the weight cut, or she can cut out all the doping and make the weight easily. It’s just whatever. As long as she makes 135, I don’t care if she’s injecting horse semen into her eyeballs but that’s the only way I feel it would be a fair fight. She’s never had a fair fight in her life and I see how the prospect of that would scare the hell out of her and why she would insist at fighting heavier.”
Cyborg’s year-long suspension for the steroid stanozolol does not end until December.
At that time, it’s possible she won’t have a 145-pound division to return to.
There has not yet been a single Strikeforce women’s featherweight match contested in 2012, and none have been scheduled. The last time two women fought at 145 in a Strikeforce cage? It was Cyborg’s final bout before being suspended. Afterward, UFC president Dana White seemed to cast doubt on the future of the division. To date, no public announcements have been made about its fate.
If Rousey can cement her status as the 135-pound champion, that might further force Cyborg’s hand in moving down. There’s always been a noted dearth of talent at the higher weight class, and with more competition among bantamweights, Cyborg might be made to adapt or move on.