The 37-year-old mixed martial artist’s next fight won’t be inside an MMA cage — it’ll be in a boxing ring against Simone de Silva.
Cyborg, one of the best women’s MMA fighters of all time, said on her “The Catchup” YouTube show Monday that was finalizing a contract for her professional boxing debut.
By Wednesday, that was done.
Cyborg shared on Instagram that she would be fighting de Silva at 154 pounds in the main event of a card on Sept. 25 in Cyborg’s hometown of Curitiba, Brazil.
“It’s one of my dreams,” the 37-year-old Cyborg, currently the Bellator women’s featherweight champion, said of boxing.
The fight will be an eight-round boxing match with two-minute rounds and contested with 8-ounce gloves.
Cyborg is currently a restricted free agent in an exclusive negotiating period with Bellator, and sources said Bellator president Scott Coker has given his support for this boxing match.
PFL had made public overtures about putting together a fight between Cyborg and the two-time Olympic judo gold medalist, with the implication that PFL could potentially sign Cyborg as a free agent.
Cyborg said she has not spoken with PFL at all at this point.
“No, we never have any talks with PFL,” Cyborg said. “We never talked about this fight. I know there’s a lot of talk on the internet about making this fight happens in different ways, but we’ve never had the talk about anything.”
Cyborg did not say she is disinterested in the Harrison matchup, but Cyborg has always been vocal about the positives of her relationship with Coker and Bellator, which she has touted as having the best women’s featherweight division in MMA.
Cyborg said on the show that if Cyborg vs. Harrison happens while she is still with
Bellator, that would be “great.”
“I’m open to the best fights for my fans,” Cyborg said.
Cyborg (26-2, 1 NC), whose real name is Cristiane Justino, is a former UFC, Strikeforce and Invicta FC women’s featherweight champion. She has four Bellator title defenses and has won six straight fights overall. Cyborg’s only loss since her pro debut in 2005 was to current UFC double champion Amanda Nunes in 2018.
The 35-year-old Brazilian-American mixed martial artist, whose real name is Cristiane Justino, is ready for her first Bellator title defense as part of the promotion’s debut on a new network.
Cyborg will put her Bellator women’s featherweight title on the line against Arlene Blencowe on October 15 at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, promotion officials have announced.
The card will air in a Thursday night time slot on CBS Sports Network. Bellator had been on Paramount Network (formerly Spike TV) since 2013.
Cyborg (22-2, 1 NC), ESPN’s No. 3-ranked pound-for-pound female fighter in the world, won the Bellator title in her last outing, stopping Julia Budd by fourth-round TKO in January.
Cyborg has won two straight after losing the UFC women’s featherweight title to Amanda Nunes at UFC 232 in December 2018.
Cyborg departed the UFC after her contract expired last year. She’s one of the most fearsome women’s MMA fighters of all time with 18 KO/TKO finishes in 22 pro wins.
Blencowe (13-7) has won three straight and is coming off a unanimous decision win over UFC veteran Leslie Smith last November. The Australia native has just two MMA losses in the past five years, both to Budd. Blencowe, a 37-year-old boxing veteran, has seven KO/TKOs in 13 pro wins.
Cris Cyborg has earned her place in the mixed martial arts history books…
The 34-year-old Brazilian-American mixed martial artist, whose real name is Cristiane Justino, made her Bellator debut at The Forum in Inglewood, California, in grand fashion.
Cris Cyborg (22-2 MMA, 1-0 BMMA) scored a fourth-round TKO of Julia Buddto claim the women’s featherweight belt, to complete a grand slam and enhance her legacy in the sport.
The victory saw her win a championship with her fourth MMAorganization, having also won titles with the UFC, Invicta FC, and Strikeforce.
In the early rounds of Saturday’s fight, Cris Cyborg showed little respect to her opponent, throwing relentless strikes to Budd’s face and body.
When victory came in the fourth, Cris Cyborg dropped to the canvas, appearing to celebrate the win in disbelief having ended Budd’s unbeaten run of 2,998 days.
The 34-year-old Brazilian mixed martial artist, better known as Cris Cyborg, has signed with Bellator MMA after a three-year run with the Ultimate Fighting Championship ( UFC).
One of the best women’s fighters in the history of the sport is now under a multiyear, multi-bout contract with Bellator, promotion president Scott Coker announced via Twitter. Coker wrote that it was the biggest contract ever given to a women’s MMA fighter.
Cyborg accompanied Bellator’s announcement with a video message to her fans on Facebook.
“My goal is to become the only female fighter to hold four different major titles in the same division,” said Cyborg, who has already held the women’s featherweight title in the UFC, Strikeforce and Invicta FC.
The final fight on Cyborg’s UFC contract came against Felicia Spencer at UFC 240 in July, a bout Cyborg won via unanimous decision.
The fighter and UFC president Dana Whitehave had a long history of butting heads, and White said in the aftermath of that bout the UFC was out of the Cyborg business. The UFC waived its 90-day exclusive negotiating window with the Brazilian knockout artist, making her a free agent.
Cyborg, who is No. 3 pound-for-pound among women in ESPN‘s MMA rankings, won the UFC women’s featherweight title by beating Tonya Evinger by third-round TKO at UFC 214 in July 2017. She dropped the belt to Amanda Nunes, also the UFC’s women’s bantamweight champ, at UFC 232 last December via first-round knockout. That defeat was Cyborg’s first in 13 years, since her pro MMA debut in 2005.
From 2005 until 2018, Cyborg was the most dominating and fearsome force in women’s mixed martial arts. Justino went undefeated and won 17 of 20 victories by finish. Cyborg has beaten the likes of Holly Holm, Marloes Coenen and Gina Carano. Historically, she has also been one of the best-known women’s MMA fighters in the world, drawing solid numbers on television and pay-per-view.
“I have worked with countless athletes over my 30-plus years of promoting combat sports, but there is no one quite like Cyborg,” said Coker, who promoted Justino with Strikeforce. “Her ability to excite the crowd from the moment she makes her walk to the cage is special, and having had the pleasure of promoting several of her fights in the past, I am looking forward to the opportunity of promoting her once again. Cyborg is the most dominant female fighter in the history of the sport and she will be a perfect fit here at Bellator, where champion Julia Budd and the other women that make up best female featherweight division in the world have eagerly awaited her arrival.”
Cyborg was brought into the UFC in 2016 at a catchweight of 140 pounds. She had competed previously at 145 pounds, a more natural weight. The idea at the time was to set up a fight between Cyborg and Ronda Rousey, but it never materialized. Cyborg was too big to get down to Rousey’s 135-pound weight class and Rousey departed the UFC later in 2016.
Cyborg and the UFC had an embattled relationship even before Cyborg was under contract. In 2014, White infamously made fun of Cyborg for her appearance at an MMA awards show, saying she looked like male fighter Wanderlei Silva in a dress. Cyborg took it as White saying she looked like a man; White has said that he was making a comment on Cyborg’s past history with performance-enhancing drugs. Cyborg tested positive for a steroid and was stripped of her Strikeforce title in 2011.
After Nunes beat Cyborg last December, White repeatedly said Cyborg didn’t want a rematch, which Cyborg vehemently denied. Meanwhile, Cyborg said she felt the UFC never truly built out a women’s featherweight division in which she could compete, which was a valid criticism.
On Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show in July, Cyborg said she wanted a public apology from White as a condition of her re-signing with the UFC.
“Of course, he has to apologize,” Justino said. “I think he has family, he has kids. … I don’t know if he has a heart, but I think one thing he’s doing is not just touching me, because he doesn’t like me. He’s touching the people around me, he’s touching my family. It’s not right.”
The rocky relationship came to an end in earnest after UFC 240 when Cyborg’s team posted a doctored video online that inaccurately quoted White in subtitles while talking to Cyborg backstage in Edmonton, Alberta. Cyborg apologized on social media, but White said in an interview on the UFC’s YouTube channel that the promotion was done with Cyborg.
“I’m going to release her from her contract and I will not match any offers [she receives],” White said. “She is free and clear to go to Bellator or any of these other promotions and fight these easy fights she wants. Done. Done deal. I will literally, today, have my lawyer draft a letter to [Justino’s team saying] that she is free and clear.”
In the Bellator release announcing her signing, it makes note of the promotion’s healthy women’s featherweight division, including Budd, who has won 11 straight.
