It sounds like the rocky relationship between the UFC and Cris Cyborg will continue right up until her contract expires in early 2019.
Cris Cyborg is not happy about the timing of a proposed champion vs. champion superfight with Amanda Nunes. We mentioned this earlier in the weekend when the women’s featherweight champion took to Twitter to complain about the UFC sending contracts with a December 30th date, which would be 10 months since she last fought in March.
But unbeknownst to us, Cyborg had done a video interview with Globo’s Combate around the same time getting much deeper into the situation than even Twitter’s new 280 character limit could allow.
”If Amanda needs six months to get ready for this fight – actually a year, right, because she challenged me in December … It’s the same thing that someone comes to your house, knocking at your door and saying ‘I want call you to fight’ and then suddenly saying ‘Hey, wait there, I need a year to get ready,’” Cyborg said (via the magic of Google Translate).
“When you challenge, you have to be prepared for the time that the fight happens. I find it disrespectful to myself, waiting for the person for a year. I have no problem fighting Amanda on December 29, she wants some time to prepare. But I believe I could fight before and at least not wait all this time, because we get paid when we fight, and you do not get paid when you don’t fight.”
”There are girls that can fight from my category,” she said. “Only they do not want it, they want me to fight only with Amanda. Only we have to wait 10 months, almost a year for this fight to happen!”
Having Cyborg sit out for 10 months at the peak of her athletic career isn’t the only thing bugging her about the UFC right now. There’s also the issue of the upcoming Ultimate Fighter season with women’s featherweights, which Cyborg claims is actually just a bunch of puffed up bantamweights.
”They made the TUF house and cut all the girls who were 145 pounds,” Cyborg said. “They just signed up girls who can make 135.”
All in all, it makes for an unhappy Cyborg who sounds uninterested in re-signing with the UFC once her contract ends early next year.
”I think this fight will be my last in the UFC, because my contract goes until March and I doing this fight in December, I think it will be the last one the guys will see me fight.”