No one is anticipating Cris Cyborg is about to suffer a major upset at the hands of Lina Lansberg this weekend at UFC Fight Night 95.
Actually, most people who’ve been watching the Brazilian throughout her career aren’t particularly prepared for the idea that she’ll ever lose, period. She’s among the most dominant mixed martial artists of her era, arguably the best woman to ever throw hands in any combat sport and finally getting the credit she deserves by headlining an event for the biggest fight promotion on Earth.
But there’s an ignorance in focusing on those things and only those things, a blind spot created by obsessing over the positives that doesn’t do justice to the stakes of Cyborg as a UFC phenomenon. In case you forgot, MMA is as volatile and unpredictable as any sport in the world; zigging when one should have zagged might place them on the wrong side of a four-ounce glove and erase a legacy entirely in one fell swoop.
So what would it mean if that happened on Saturday night, once all the drama of birth control pills and making 141 pounds was over and the world forgot that the most important threat—the actual fight—still had to go down? What would happen if Lansberg shocked the world and sent Cyborg reeling to the canvas?
Well, it would be a historic upset, to begin. Lansberg is a +700 underdog (bet $100 to win $700), according to Odds Shark, an experienced muay thai fighter with a 6-1 MMA record who was brought in to showcase just how badly Cyborg can hurt a person in a fistfight. Nobody expects anything less than Lansberg receiving that hurt while Cyborg’s hometown fans bloodthirstily howl for more, so if she caught the Brazilian and stopped her it would instantly be on a level with TJ Dillashaw beating Renan Barao or Matt Serra finishing GSP.
Beyond that, though, there are major implications past this random September Saturday for Cyborg and a loss now, when nobody is expecting it and everyone is mentally planning her next move, would be insurmountable.
She’s finally arrived in the UFC after years of being dismissed and discredited. She memorably demolished Leslie Smith earlier this year, and suddenly she’s getting the attention she’s long deserved. Furthermore, people seem to really like her. Her personality comes through in promotional material, and fans are seeing there’s more to her than they may have thought.
She’s proving she’s a draw, both in the attention she garnered leading up to that Smith fight and the ovations she received in the festivities surrounding it, and now as a headliner in her homeland over other established stars like Renan Barao and Bigfoot Silva. She’s gone, more or less overnight, from being one of Dana White’s favorite pariahs to one of the fighters he trusts to prop up an event in a market that’s been hit-or-miss for a while now.
She’s gotten herself back into the conversation for a fight with Ronda Rousey—a battle that’s been gesticulating outside the cage for years now and would provide the largest payday of her career by far. She’s also a horrible matchup for Rousey given her ruthless striking, raw power and size advantage, and if she got that fight and won it she might well become the most famous female fighter alive.
And if she lost on Saturday night? It would all be gone.
Again, no one is expecting that. However to summarily dismiss it would be a dangerous exercise, as the proverbial MMA gods have proved time and again. Every time people take an outcome for granted or identify a combatant as unbeatable, someone comes along and proves otherwise—often out of nowhere, which is exactly where Lansberg is coming from.
Smart money is on Cyborg sending her right back in that direction when they meet. Given the stakes and the volatility of life when the cage door is locked, though, it’s unwise to act like that’s the only conceivable conclusion.
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