Joe Rogan Wants The UFC To Implement A Women’s Featherweight Division For Cris Cyborg

Though she’s only two fights into her UFC career, Cris Cyborg’s story is already beginning to grow a bit repetitive: She damn near kills herself to make the 140 pound weight limit, beats the brakes off of whichever poor soul is placed in front of her, calls out Ronda Rousey for the Nuh-Uh Ain’t Never Gunna Happen Championship of the World, and we are all left wondering what’s next for the one fighter on the UFC’s roster incapable of making the bantamweight limit. Rinse, repeat, and so on …

At Fight Night 95 this past weekend, the story was no different. After laying waste to a game-but-overmatched Lina Lansberg in the evening’s main event, Cyborg once again took to the mic to call out the former women’s bantamweight champion, saying “Let’s make this fight for all the fans, for women’s MMA. I think everybody wants this fight, it would be amazing.” But with Rousey still sitting quietly on the sidelines, the question now becomes: what is the UFC supposed to do with Cyborg?

According to Joe Rogan, the answer is simple: Establish a women’s featherweight division and allow Cyborg to hold dominion over it for now. The UFC commentator took to Twitter last night to lay out the realities of the Cyborg situation, even going so far as to beg the UFC to do for women’s 145ers what they did for 135ers with Rousey.

Rogan’s point is a pretty sensible one. With no featherweight division for Cyborg to compete in, the organization simply cannot keep forcing her to take ultimately meaningless catchweight bouts against undersized competitors, especially when she can barely make that weight to begin with. It’s just plain dangerous. But to play devil’s advocate for a second, there’s a very simple reason that the UFC hasn’t even toyed with the idea of creating a women’s featherweight division: the talent pool.

Sadly, there just aren’t that many top-level women’ featherweights out there to make up a solid division, let alone pose a threat to Cyborg. Take a look over the current rankings list for the weight class; the UFC would have to completely absorb Invicta FC’s roster in order to establish a respectable division, and even then, it would primarily consist of fighters who have either already been beaten by Cyborg or who have less than 10 professional fights to their credit (Nicole Upshaw is currently ranked 25th in the world and has only fought once as a pro, for instance).

But like Rogan said, the same could (and was) said about the women’s bantamweight division prior to the Rousey Era, so maybe all the UFC needs to do in order to up the level of female featherweights around the world is simply establish the weight class. In any case, it better start figuring out what it plans to do with Cyborg as soon as possible, because the well of intriguing matchups for her is already starting to dry up.