The beef between Strikeforce bantamweight title holder “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey and Cris “Cyborg” Santos is well-documented, and after Cyborg’s recent call out, Rousey was quick to respond.
“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,” Rousey said on TSN Radio’s The MMA Report with John Pollack (transcribed by MMA Fighting).
“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.”
Santos, who has served nine months of a one-year suspension issued by the California State Athletic State Commission for testing positive for the steroid stanozolol, made it clear she would like to fight Rousey in her return fight at either 145 pounds or a catch weight of 140 pounds.
Rousey, a former Olympic bronze medalist in Judo, also stated that Cyborg could make bantamweight “easily” if she “cut out all the doping.”
The current face of women’s MMA also hinted that she would be open to a 140-pound catch weight bout…if she believed Cyborg was professional enough to make the 140-pound weight limit
“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.”
The 25-year-old champion’s comments are a little off base here, as Cyborg has only missed weight once, when she faced Hitomi Akano at Strikeforce: Shamrock vs. Diaz in April 2009.
Santos weighed in at 151 pounds for a bout scheduled to take place at featherweight (145 pounds).
Although the Brazilian is a former Strikeforce champion in her own right, that doesn’t make Rousey think she owes Cyborg anything.
“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.”
Santos has not lost since her professional debut in May 2005, rattling off 10 straight wins and a no contest since then. Rousey is 5-0 in her MMA career, winning all of her fights via armbar in the first round.
Amidst all this drama, Rousey defends her title for the first time against Sarah Kaufman on Saturday.
What is the best weight for the most compelling fight brewing in women’s MMA to potentially take place at sometime next year?
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