Strikeforce women’s featherweight champion Cris ‘Cyborg’ Santos (11-1) showed she hadn’t missed a step after a year long absence from the cage, demolishing the worlds No. 2 women’s 145 lbs fighter in just sixteen seconds this past weekend.
Santos defended her title for a third time, defeating Japanese opponent Hiroko Yamanaka in the co-main event of Strikeforce: Melendez vs. Masvidal in San Diego.
Speaking to Tatame.com, the champion spoke about constantly improving herself as a fighter, and using the four fights on her contract as a way of impressing UFC president Dana White enough to add a women to the Octagon.
It’s obvious you always go for the KO. But I believe that, after a year off the circuit, and fighting a tough opponent like Yamanaka you weren’t expecting such a striking win. Am I right?
Of course not, because I haven’t fought for a year and a half and every time you enter the cage you feel that adrenaline. When you keep fighting one bout after the other you feel it, so imagine how does it feel when you haven’t proved your potential for a long time, so you have to do a good fight, it’s complicated. I was prepared to fight five rounds, I thought it would be tougher, but thanks God I got this good outcome, I landed that punch right on the beginning and things worked out. It was quick, wasn’t it? In 16 seconds I could get a win!Since you’re so dominant on your weight division, do you consider fighting in other weight classes?
Due to my contract, I had to stay a long time of the circuit, and with no opponents. But now I’ve signed a new contract, with four more fights on it, and I believe they’ll find someone for me to fight. Of course I can drop to the division below where there’re more girls fighting, but it’s actually already hard for me to cut weight to fight on the featherweight division.What message would you sent Dana White, who doesn’t seem much excited about keeping the female divisions in the UFC, when Strikeforce is extinct?
I’ll take these four fights I have left in Strikeforce to win Dana White. It doesn’t matter if I do so by using of my students, but I’ll be in the UFC someday. I know he has his reasons, and there’re really few women on the circuit, but I’ll keep on going, training, putting on good fights to cheer women up.
Check out the full photo gallery for the Strikeforce show at Strikeforce.com