Holly Holm’s manager says they accepted fight with Cris Cyborg but not at 145

Holly Holm is coming off two losses in a row immediately after winning the biggest fight of her life in devastating fashion.

Since beating Ronda Rousey at UFC 193 in 2015 to become a UFC champion, Holm lost her first title defense to Miesha Tate at UFC 196 in March and then went on to lose a unanimous decision to Valentina Shevchenko at UFC on FOX 20 in July.

Now, looking to get back on track to her winning ways, Holm and her team accepted a fight under certain conditions with Cris Cyborg, according to her longtime manager, Lenny Fresquez.

“We make decisions as a team,” Fresquez said in a report by Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting. “We accepted the Cyborg fight up to a certain weight limit. On two different occasions, we went up on weight, and [Cyborg] turned them down.”

“We did that as a team. As a team, we didn’t want to go up as high 145 pounds.”

Fresquez said that Holm and her team accepted a fight against Cyborg at 136-pounds and then 138-pounds. However, the terms of the negotiations for the fight were not able to be agreed upon by both parties.

UFC President Dana White recently said on the UFC Unfiltered podcast that he offered Cyborg two different dates for the inaugural women’s featherweight title but no agreement was able to be made.

White said that he gave Cyborg eight weeks to make the cut to get down to 145 to start the women’s featherweight division. However, White said Cyborg turned the fight down saying that she could not make 145 in eight weeks.

Cyborg gave a lengthy response to MMA Fighting saying that her last fight with the cut to 140 really took it out on her body and she was anemic. Cyborg said she decided after that fight that she would never fight at the 140-pound catchweight again. Cyborg also stated that she needs 12 weeks notice to accept a fight at 145, with still having to cut a good amount of weight to get down to the featherweight limit.