Cris Cyborg calls for the UFC to create women’s featherweight division

Last month, Invicta FC women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg made her highly anticipated UFC debut. Cyborg dominated the fight, knocking out Leslie Smith in the 1st round of their catchweight scrap.

Despite the dominant win, Cyborg expressed her desire to return to Invicta to defend her featherweight championship before returning to the UFC. While Miesha Tate is open to a fight against Cyborg, Cyborg is putting the pressure on the UFC to create a women’s featherweight division.

She spoke on The MMA Hour:

“When you think about, I say man, I don’t want,” Cyborg said of making 140 pounds again. “When you really think, I don’t want because it’s really hard, really stressful. I love training, I train a lot, but for 140 it’s worse. You have to run every day. I ran six miles in the morning, six miles at night, and train MMA and other arts, too. It’s a lot of work, a lot of work. … Man, it’s no easy. George Lockhart is very good. I think I need some more time between fights at 140. I think 140 all the time is not good for my body.

“I think I’m asking for this for a lot of years, for my division (in the UFC),” she continued. “They say they don’t have a lot of girls at 145. I would think they have a lot of girls. But they say it’s hard to make one division of 145 for now. They opened for me at 140. I’m open for big fights and it would be my dream to make my division in the UFC. It makes me sad that I don’t have my division, but they can make the biggest fights for all my fans. ESPN says I’m the number one pound for pound in women’s MMA, and I think if the UFC wants to invest in women’s MMA, I think I have to be in the UFC.”