If Holly Holm can pull off the improbable at UFC 219 she sounds like she wouldn’t be at all averse to giving Cris Cyborg another shot at her.
If Holly Holm didn’t sound like she was chomping at the bit to fight Cris Cyborg back during the lead-up to her first foray in the UFC’s featherweight division, she seems much more confident in the whole idea now. Confident enough, in fact, that she’d even be prepared to fight her twice.
A good thing considering she’ll be sharing the cage with Justino in just a week’s time. ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ is returning to 145lbs to face one of the most ferocious competitors in the history of women’s MMA at UFC 219 on December 30th in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the days ahead of the event she spoke to the assembled media, via conference call, and made it clear that if she does get the upset win and claim the featherweight belt, Holm would absolutely be willing to give Cyborg an immediate rematch (transcript via MMA Fighting).
“With Ronda, I was open to the rematch as well,” Holm explained on a recent UFC 219 conference call. “It’s just, they didn’t know how long or when she would come back, or when she would want to, and that’s when I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to just wait around. I’ll wait if you can tell me that it’s going to be within six months or whatever,’ but I didn’t want to just be waiting around for that one fight. I wanted to be able to fight and train and live out my passion. I didn’t want it to just be based on just one fighter.
“So, I think that situation was different. If that was to happen in this fight, of course I would say yes. I think anybody deserves a rematch. I think that’s just the name of the game. That’s the fighting spirit, and I would definitely be open to that. I feel like Cris is definitely a competitive person as well and trains hard, and I feel like the situation after the fight would be a little bit different anyway. I don’t think that Cris would want to sit aside for a year or however long.”
Ronda Rousey has competed once since her KO loss to Holm, returning at UFC 207 to fight Amanda Nunes for the bantamweight championship. She lost that fight in the first round and has been in a state of pseudo-retirement since. Holm received some criticism for not waiting for Rousey to return, most notably from Dana White, who has had a long series of frustrations in dealing with Holm’s management.
Much like Rousey at the time, Cyborg is riding a long unbeaten streak – covering 19-straight fights since her debut. However, much like Holm anticipates, it seems highly unlikely that Cyborg would be interested in a prolonged stretch of inactivity, especially not if she were to lose the belt come next weekend.