When we talk about many of the pioneers of women’s MMA, there’s often discussion about how they were “before their time,” making a couple hundred bucks here and there in the few MMA leagues willing to book female fighting. Then came Ronda Rousey and soon after her, the UFC. Now there’s women’s divisions there at 135 and 115 pounds, and now is the perfect time for women to step into combat sports and potentially have a lucrative career.
Unfortunately for Cris Cyborg, both a pioneer and still arguably the best pound-for-pound female fighter in the world, she’s still stuck in a strange sort of limbo. She’s one of the few women to fight at 145 pounds, and as recently as a few days ago UFC president Dana White said there were no plans to add this division. After a year of trying to bully Cyborg into dropping down to 135 pounds, the UFC finally relented and gave her a fight … at 140 pounds.
Even this has been a hard number for Cris to hit. Leading up to her last fight, video blogs showed Cyborg literally crying as she sat in the sauna sweating out weight to try and hit the catch weight limit. And now we have more weight-cutting drama to watch leading up to her fight this weekend against Lina Lansberg in Brazil. In the above fight blog video (at the 7:00 mark) you can see Cyborg arguing with her nutrition coach George Lockhart over his decision to put her on birth control leading up to the fight.
Here’s what she said on The MMA Hour yesterday about her current cut:
“In this camp, my nutrition coach, he starts giving to me birth control, and I never take this in my life, and I take this three months, every day. My coach says it will be good for me, I believe in him, and, man I fly from America to Brazil 168 pounds. My body will hold more water than normal, and I don’t think this will really help my body.”
…
“I fly from America to Brazil [five days ago] 168 pounds, today I wake up 165.”
That’s not good, and with the way Cyborg’s body is reacting to her birth control there’s a good chance she could miss weight by a long shot when she steps on the scales Friday. It wouldn’t be the first time ‘lady business’ has messed up Cris Cyborg’s weight cut. Back in 2009 she went over the 145 pound limit by 5 pounds, blaming the situation on her period.
With the menstrual cycle and birth control both playing havoc with water retention, women already have a harder time calculating weight cuts than men. Add in Cris Cyborg’s monster cut to get down to 140 pounds and it’s not surprising any small problem could screw everything up and cause her to miss weight. Cris has already talked about no longer accepting 140-pound catchweight fights, even though the UFC has been insistent that’s the only way she’ll fight in the UFC. We suppose a botched weight cut may be a better sign they’re asking her to cut too much weight than some sort of medical emergency.
(Via Bloody Elbow)