Issue 099

March 2013

‘Rowdy’ and ‘Cyborg’ – ex Strikeforce champs on a 2013 collision course that refuses to recognise weight divisions 

Assuming she gets past Liz Carmouche in the first-ever women’s UFC fight, the immensely talented, brash and photogenic Rousey could be set for her long-awaited grudge match against the fearsome and aptly named ‘Cyborg.’ And what a grudge they have already. 

Ever-quotable, ‘Rowdy’ Ronda, a 2008 Olympic judo bronze medallist, has spent months taking every conceivable pot-shot at the Brazilian. Questioning her gender, morals and honesty, and repeatedly bringing up Santos’ December 2011 drug test failure, Rousey (6-0) has done a superb job of talking up the fight.  

Santos (10-1-0-1) has fired back, calling Rousey a “spoiled little girl” but Ronda’s verbal shots are the ones that have really landed the hardest, particularly when questioning the validity of Santos’ entire career and loudly voicing her opinion that the 27-year-old has been receiving chemical help for years.

Certainly, evidence proving Santos was using stanozolol, a steroid popular with female bodybuilders, has made her most recent massacres – of Hiroko Yamanaka and Jan Finney – much harder to accept. 

Coming off a yearlong suspension after the 18-second annihilation of the hopelessly outmatched Yamanaka, Santos will be battling inactivity, ring rust and a presumably harsh weight cut to make 135lb. And that’s even before stepping into the cage with the best finisher in women’s MMA.  

Big, strong, heavy handed and almost as aggressive as her brawling ex husband, Evangelista ‘Cyborg’ Santos, the 145lb Cristiane is a genuine wrecking machine. At the lower weight – where she once claimed she could not safely fight – will she be the same fighter, however?

Undoubtedly a far more destructive striker, Cyborg isn’t in Rousey’s league as a grappler, despite some real success in Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournaments. Some two years older, Santos is far more experienced inside the cage; in a nine-year career she’s picked up eight stoppage victories. 

Meanwhile, fighting for money only since March 2011, Rousey has spent a piffling seven minutes and 39 seconds inside the ring. Santos spent longer just brutalising Finney (though that would have been shorter if not for some debated officiating). The Brazilian has gone into the third round of a fight four times, while Rousey has only been extended past the opening minute once, by Miesha Tate.  

And even in that fight, Rousey slapped on her trademark finisher, the armbar, in the first 60 seconds. Only Tate’s flexibility, stubbornness and sheer guts kept her in the fight long enough to fall prey to Rousey’s second armbar later in the round.

Neither woman is any stranger to competing on the big stage. Rousey took on the world’s best female judokas over 10 years and represented the US at two Olympic Games. Whilst her fight with Tate was among the biggest Strikeforce matches in years, and certainly the only one mentioned on the front page of USA Today. And since then, she’s just as rapidly armbarred another former champion, Sarah Kaufman. 

Similarly, Cyborg was the ‘other half’ of the then-biggest female MMA fight of all time in August 2009, when almost 14,000 flocked to San Jose’s HP Pavilion to see her battle the former face of women’s MMA turned Hollywood movie star, Gina Carano.  

Bashing Carano to defeat a fraction of a second before the end of the opening round in a furious scrap, Cyborg won the inaugural Strikeforce women’s featherweight title, a championship she successfully defended twice before having her win over Yamanaka overturned and her title stripped.  

With UFC not promoting women’s fights at 145lb, and the Rousey scrap a near-guaranteed smash hit at the gate and on screen, it seems inevitable Santos will find a way to drop weight and step into the cage to face her mouthy nemesis. But who wins? On paper, it looks to be the toughest fight of both women’s careers and should be explosive – while it lasts. 

Whoever wins, few would expect it to go five rounds and fewer still would expect the pair to embrace and go out to dinner afterwards.