When you’re as massive of a superstar as Ronda Rousey is, disappearing from the cage for a year is going to raise a ton of questions. Fortunately for Cat Zingano, she doesn’t have the bright spotlight of fame on her like Rousey does, so her lack of activity in the sport — dating back to February of 2015 when Ronda dispatched her in 14 seconds flat — was less of an issue.
Still, it must be hard for Zingano to watch Miesha Tate (a woman she beat) take the women’s bantamweight belt, and even harder for Miesha to now fight Amanda Nunes at UFC 200 (another woman Cat has beaten).
“Had I not taken the time off, who knows where I would have been in the mix of that?” Zingano told FightHubTV in a recent interview. “However, that wasn’t the right decision for me. I needed to take the time off. I needed it for myself, I needed it for my son. I needed it for healing, necessary both physically and mentally. And that was just the best thing for me to do.”
Now Cat Zingano is set to return and fight TUF winner Julianna Pena at UFC 200, potentially setting up the winner for a title shot of their own. But Zingano is more than open to fighting whoever the UFC wants her to … including 145-pound Invicta champion Cris Cyborg.
“Absolutely, I wanna know how I’d do against everyone!” she said with a laugh. “I wanna see. I’m curious. I like her, I think she’s a really good athlete, I think she’s tough and strong. I wanna see how tough and strong.
“I want to know what happens when I would fight this person, when I would fight that person. So catchweights, especially a bigger girl, if we got to just kinda meet wherever made sense, I think that would be awesome. I hope there’s some kind of evolution in that. I hope the UFC just wants to put on these kinds of exciting fights and see what happens with it.”
With a win at UFC 200, Zingano just may find out. After Cyborg’s first catchweight with the UFC at 198, they seem interested in bringing her back and building to what many hope will be the long awaited Cyborg vs. Rousey superfight. For that, the promotion needs a legit opponent for Cyborg, and there are few women in the organization tougher than Cat Zingano.
