Cris Cyborg

[ColinBollocks]

We can turn this into a Cyborg appreciation thread too, but I thought this is one of the more interesting side stories going on right now, which is Cyborg's weight cut.
 

UFC president Dana White recently revealed that Cris Cyborg turned down two opportunities to fight for the inaugural UFC featherweight championship, but according to the Brazilian fighter, she had a pretty good reason for it.
 
After scoring a pair of impressive knockouts in catchweight bouts, Cyborg told the promotion she wouldn’t cut down to 140 pounds anymore, so the UFC decided to create a women’s featherweight belt for the current Invicta FC champion. However, according to White, Cyborg turned down fights against Holly Holm and Germaine de Randamie.
 
“What’s crazy about that is this: I offered Cris Cyborg a title fight at 145 pounds a month ago,” White told the UFC Unfiltered podcast. “She had eight weeks to get ready for it, she said she couldn’t make the weight, said she couldn’t make 145 pounds.
 
“So then I offered her another 145-pound title fight for Brooklyn (UFC 208), she turned it down. She turned down two 145-pound title fights. One because she said she couldn’t make 145 pounds in eight weeks, and Joe Silva’s like, ‘If she can’t make 145 pounds in eight weeks, 145 isn’t the right weight class for her either.’”

 

Holm (10-2) became the UFC bantamweight champion with a win over Ronda Rousey in 2015, but suffered two defeats in inside the Octagon this year, against Miesha Tate and Valentina Shevchenko. De Randamie (6-3) fought four times under the UFC banner, finishing Larissa Pacheco and Anna Elmose in her last appearances.
 
White said that Cyborg blamed her weight cut when offered a fight with Holm, but when a new date was offered for her to fight de Randamie, “there is no excuse, she just turned the fight down.
 
“First of all, obviously when we did the deal with Cyborg we sat down with her and said, ‘Listen, if you can make it down to 135 pounds, maybe we can hire you a dietitian and help you get there or whatever, and get you in the mix, get you a couple of with these girls and then fight Ronda (Rousey) for the title,’ and she was all in,” White said. “That’s why she signed the deal. Then she was having a hard time doing it, so she cut down to 140, then this whole thing about, ‘I can’t make 140 pounds.’ Finally, we just said, ‘Fuck it, alright then, we’ll make a 145-pound title for you,’ and here we go. She said, ‘I can’t make 145 pounds in eight weeks.’

 

“This doesn’t have to do with weight. Obviously it has nothing to do with weight cutting. I don’t know what it has to do with, so we’re gonna figure it out.”
 
Apparently Cyborg wasn’t the only one who turned down the fight, though. According to White, Holm was willing to fight the Brazilian striker at 145 pounds, but her coach Mike Winkeljohn advised her against it.
 
“And just for the record, Holly was so excited, Holly was so excited for that fight,” White said. “Her coach, [Mike] Winkeljohn, said, ‘That’s not the right fight for Holly.’ So Holly had to turn it down, so we went for Germaine, and Germaine wants the fight.”

 

MMA Fighting reached out to Cyborg about White’s claims, and she explained her decision to turn down the title fights in a lengthy statement. She also revealed why she won’t work with nutritionist George Lockhart anymore.
 

In my last weight cut I almost died. I was in the bathtub cutting weight, and I thought, ‘I will die in this bathtub.’ It was the worst weight cut in my life. My nutritionist George Lockhart, who, by the way, is a UFC employee, didn’t do an effective job with this birth control pill he indicated saying that would help me. But thank God, in a war, I made weight, cutting 24 pounds in a week. My body was retaining a lot of water. The last time I spoke with George Lockhart was in the locker room before my fight. He disappeared after the fight. I’m not working with him anymore.[/size]
 
For the first time I didn’t warm up in the locker room like I do for every fight because I was too weak. I was just praying for God and went for the fight, and, once again, God gave me the victory. After all this, I went back to my hometown on Sunday and I felt sick on Sunday. My mother gave me tea and I fell asleep. The next day, like I always do after my fights, I did blood tests to see if everything was okay after a terrible weight cut. And for the first time, the nurses couldn’t take my blood, it was so thick it wouldn’t come out, so we couldn’t do tests. I was in treatment for 10 days with Dr. Ulisseia. I was in observation because I was feeling sick all the time.

You can see that I give no interviews after the fight. I told UFC Brazil PR Lilian (Caparroz) that I wanted to cancel all my interviews and couldn’t travel. After all that, at home, I decided I would not fight at this weight anymore, that I would only fight at my division. And only with 12 weeks’ notice. For my last fight, they told me eight weeks before.
 
I got a call from the UFC offering me another catchweight fight, and I said I would not fight at this weight anymore. I needed a break to get my health back to normal because my body was weak, I was anemic.

After that, they invited me to fight again, but this time at my weight and for the belt, but with 10 weeks’ notice. Knowing that I was recovering, like I said, I told them I can fight anyone in March, but I need to take care of my body, and no mention of the fact that I’m dealing with severe depression and can’t have another brutal weight cut like before. This decision is more important than the belt or the division, I’m thinking about my health.
I thank my fans. We did it! I’ll soon be fighting in my division, where I’m the world champion. You and God are loyal. I’ll be ready to fight in March.

 

Here's the documentary filmed in the build up to her last fight that shows the horror of what she went through.

Seems quite reasonable for Cyborg to ask for sometime off, seeing as her body is a mess.

[David]

So, hold on, the UFC are creating a 145lbs female division? That's interesting. 

 

Hopefully they are prepared to hold off and give Cyborg time to get fit and then run with the idea again in March.

[ColinBollocks]

It's got an asterisk next it it though, which is only if they can have Cyborg as the face of it. It's about time. Rousey v Cyborg probably isn't happening now and Cyborg has shown she can be enough of an attraction where it's worth their time.

 

Cyborg v Holm is an interesting match up too.

[David]

Why they thought a wrecking ball like Cyborg wasn't worth their time initially is beyond me. It was blatantly obvious that she'd be an attraction, and I firmly believe she was kept away due to the whole Rousey situation.

[lambyUK]

Why they thought a wrecking ball like Cyborg wasn't worth their time initially is beyond me. It was blatantly obvious that she'd be an attraction, and I firmly believe she was kept away due to the whole Rousey situation.

The major problem was the pool of women that they had to choose from at the time.

 

Whilst yes I agree they more than likely wanted to keep her away from Rousey, looking at it right now it's obvious that Cyborg is just too big for the current crop of women you see today.

 

It would have been a scary sight seeing the likes of Tate etc fight Cyborg.

 

I think now that women's mma has grown bigger and accepted more, now is the perfect time to introduce a new division catered for Cyborg with hopefully her fighting against women similar to her size.

[David]

There were women out there who could have come in at 145lbs though, wasn't there? In fact, the lack of real competition would only have served to make Cyborg look more dominant in the short-term.

 

She could have fought three times a year, smashing folk up until such a time as the weight class got more competitive, which it would have due to exposure on UFC pay per views and FOX shows. Nah, they shat it because they wanted Rousey as the sole focus of female MMA, and they knew it would be hard to sell her as "the most dominant female fighter of all the times", and "the female Mike Tyson" whilst at the same time we were watching Wanderlei Silva with long hair smashing poor fools for fun elsewhere on the card.

 

It would have raised the old "superfight" question, and that question (as I've said since the very start) has always only ever had one real answer. And that is a Holly Holm style beatdown of Honda Housey.

[lambyUK]

So what if they wanted Ronda to be the main focus?

 

It's allowed women's mma to become huge.

 

If they introduced too much at one time it may have diluted the impact Rousey made by flooding a market that the ufc weren't quite sure would take off.

[David]

So what if they wanted Ronda to be the main focus?

 

It's allowed women's mma to become huge.

 

If they introduced too much at one time it may have diluted the impact Rousey made by flooding a market that the ufc weren't quite sure would take off.

 

Well, it kinda fucked over one of (if not the best) female fighter of all time, which is a bit shit really. The company made unrealistic demands of her, knowing full well she couldn't manage it, in order to keep her out of the big show, costing her money, exposure and the chance to do her thing on the biggest stage.

 

That, in my opinion, is fucking shite.

[Supremo]

As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, didn't they sign her under the belief that she was willing to diet to eventually make 135, but then instead of doing that she actually put weight on? I don't have the time at the moment to double check all that, but I'm sure that's the case.

 

She seems a headcase.

[David]

As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, didn't they sign her under the belief that she was willing to diet to eventually make 135, but then instead of doing that she actually put weight on? I don't have the time at the moment to double check all that, but I'm sure that's the case.

 

She seems a headcase.

 

If by diet you mean kill herself and risk permanent damage then yeah, probably.

 

I think she was open to the idea of trying to make 135lbs (especially when the UFC made it clear it was that or fuck all), but quickly found out that it wasn't going to work. 

[Keith Houchen]

Ronda is the pretty white girl, of course they'd want her to be the focus of the emerging division. And not only is she a pretty white girl, she is also a wrecking machine who seems to be being retconned into something average when she is nothing of the sort.

[David]

Ronda is the pretty white girl, of course they'd want her to be the focus of the emerging division. And not only is she a pretty white girl, she is also a wrecking machine who seems to be being retconned into something average when she is nothing of the sort.

 

That's all well & good Keith, but the way that we saw all of these fans (most of whom were male, of course) claiming that Cyborg could "easily" cut to 135lbs if she really wanted to was pretty sad.

 

You never see that kind of chat about male fighters, where it's generally accepted that they have weight cutting limitations.

[Supremo]

 

 

As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, didn't they sign her under the belief that she was willing to diet to eventually make 135, but then instead of doing that she actually put weight on? I don't have the time at the moment to double check all that, but I'm sure that's the case.

 

She seems a headcase.

If by diet you mean kill herself and risk permanent damage then yeah, probably.

 

I think she was open to the idea of trying to make 135lbs (especially when the UFC made it clear it was that or fuck all), but quickly found out that it wasn't going to work.

No, I mean diet as in lose some muscle mass and do tonnes of cardio over the years and years that this has been going on. As I understood it, that was the idea, but then instead of doing that she kept posting Instagram videos of herself on scales weighing more than she had previously, which didn't seem like someone open to the idea of trying at all.

 

Of course she looks like she's going through hell in that video of her cut. She was cutting from a higher weight than ever. I never understood the sympathy or weird hatred towards the UFC that it garnered. She signed the bout agreement. She agreed to try and lose some of her natural weight. Why is any of this the UFC's fault that she went the other way and made it so fucking tough on herself? She's mental.

[David]

No one is blaming the UFC for that particular cut, but the fact that they certainly assisted in painting this picture that she was avoiding fighting Ronda by not "simply cutting" to 135lbs was pretty fucking nasty. There comes a point where it just has to be accepted that certain fighters can't cut down any further. Cyborg can't make 135lbs. It's as simple as that.

[Supremo]

No one is blaming the UFC for that particular cut,

Everyone was. I vividly remember it. She posted that video and every fucker online and in the media were acting like she was this huge victim, being forced to suffer greatly because the UFC didn't have a 145 division. I'm pretty sure there was a whole episode of the MMA Beat dedicated to it. Fuck off. She agreed to lower her natural body weight, in the hope that cutting in the final few weeks would be easier, then did the exact opposite and got bigger. She's not a victim. She's a maniac. What you see in that video is borderline self harm.

 

She literally had three and a half years between when the women first came into the UFC and when she posted that video. In three and a half years she could've lost muscle mass and dieted down to a lower weight, in order to make the final cut much easier, and made millions. Or, if it wasn't possible, she shouldn't have agreed to do it, nor should she have signed any bout agreements at a weight so much lower than her natural weight.

 

I've said it before, but I genuinely wonder if she's got something wrong with her. Do steroids make you nuts? Her actions certainly don't seem to be that of a normal person. If you tell me I've got three yeas to lower my natural body weight in order to make enough money that I don't have to do a fucking thing for the rest of my life? I'm on the treadmill every second of every day. She just got bigger. Insanity.