Cyborg: “Everyone knows who the champ is at 145”

Last weekend, in the main event of UFC 208, Germaine de Randamie scored a controversial decision win over former bantamweight champ Holly Holm to become the UFC’s first ever women’s featherweight champion. De Randamie’s history-making win, however, had a massive shadow cast over it by one woman: Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino.

Cyborg, who has not lost since her pro debut more than a decade ago, is far and away the best female featherweight on earth. Regrettably, several brutal cuts to 140 pounds and a December brush with the United States Anti-Doping Agency meant that she wasn’t able to participate in the UFC’s inaugural women’s featherweight title fight. Despite her absence from this historic bout, however, she is still widely regarded as the uncrowned featherweight queen.

On Monday afternoon, Cyborg made an appearance on the MMA Hour to discuss the UFC’s recent featherweight title fight, offering up her take on who won the fight, and what it meant to be excluded from it.

“You know, I think it was a very close fight, but if you look at the face of Holly, and you look at the face of Germaine, you will see that Holly was more beat than Germaine. I think Holly threw more combos, but there was no effect to the combos. Germaine touched Holly more than Holly touched Germaine. I think she should have won.” 

“You could see Holly, she didn’t feel comfortable in the standup, because she tried grappling,” Cyborg added. “She tried wrestling. She didn’t try keeping her game to standup. She tried grappling, but she couldn’t take down Germaine.”

According to Cyborg, however, it doesn’t really matter who won the belt at UFC 208 – because everyone knows who the real featherweight champ is.

“Everyone knows who the champ is at 145,” she said. “I’ve been the world champ for almost 10 years.”

Who do you think won UFC 208’s main event? Do you consider Cris “Cyborg” Justino the real champ? Sound off, PENN Nation!

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 2/13/2017.