Fans of Cris Cyborg have witnessed her compete in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts since Women first earned the opportunity to fight on Television for a World Championship when Cris Cyborg defeated the undefeated Gina Carano in the Main Event of Strikeforce San Jose in 2009 an event that aired live on Showtime averaging 576,000 views and peaking with over 856,000 fans watching the main event between Cyborg and Carano. While fighting for Strikeforce other females signed to the promotion included; Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Amanda Nunes, Sarah Kaufman, Marloes Coenen while the men’s divisions featured Nick Diaz, Robbie Lawler, Fedor Emelianenko, Fabricio Werdum, Jacare and a host of ‘All Time Greats’
Upon winning the Strikeforce world Championships at 145, after the purchase from the UFC Cyborg joined Invicta FC as a free agent. Invicta FC was formed by Shannon Knapp and besides being owned by a female entrepreneur the promotion was an all female promotion featuring only lady fights. Showcasing top talents such as Michelle Watterson, Thug Rose, Amanda Nunes, Ayaka Hamasaki, Carla Esparza, Cat Zingano, Claudia Gadelha, Irene Aldana, Felicia Spencer, Megan Anderson, Julia Budd, Lauren Murphy, Liz Carmouche, Loma Lookboonmee, Mackenzie Dern, and so many other stars in Women’s Mixed Martial Arts. Cyborg helped establish Invicta FC as one of the top rated events on UFC fight pass at the time, pressuring the UFC to introduce her to their audience.
Competing twice at 140 lbs in the UFC, Cyborg set a record for FS1 with over 1.3 million fans watching her ‘Superfight’ against the debuting Lina Lansburg, on the back of her UFC 198 debut which saw her compete in front of a home crowd of over 45,000 Brazilian Fans. Eventually due to pressure from the fans the UFC was forced to create the Featherweight division which Cyborg won at UFC 214 in front of her adopted Southern California hometown of Anaheim before defending the belt as a main event of UFC 214 and UFC 222 establishing herself as one of the top PPV sellers for the company in both 2017 and 2018 with those performances. Cyborg not only won the UFC featherweight championship she essentially forced them to create a division that still exists today despite no contenders ranked on the promotions website besides Amanda Nunes who has not defended the Featherweight Championship in over two years. Cyborg has continued to ask for a rematch with Nunes who most recently lost her Bantamweight belt to Juliana Pena before a rematch allowed her to reclaim ‘Double Champ’ status.
Upon the completion of her UFC contract following a win over their #1 contender Felicia Spencer, Cyborg signed one of the largest contracts in the history of the sport of MMA when she left the UFC as a free agent and joined the #1 Female Featherweight division in the world with Bellator MMA. As a promotion Bellator MMA had already established the division with a champion in Julia Budd who at the time had only lost to Amanda Nunes and Ronda Rousey. Cyborg moved straight to the promotion and secured a TKO victory in the 4th round at the Forum which was the same stadium her unprecedented 13 year undefeated streak had ended in. With the victory Cyborg became the only fighter in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts to be recognized as the Grand Slam Champion by winning all 4 world championships in the sport at their weight class. Since that victory Cyborg has defended the belt 4 more times and is on a 6 fight win streak in MMA.
Currently scheduled to make her boxing debut Sept. 25th in her home town of Curitiba Brazil against former World Champion contender Simone Silva, Cris will be looking to win the Fight Music Show inaugural promotional female boxing championship when she faces Silva an opponent with nearly 40 professional Boxing fight in her first pro boxing fight.
Speaking to James Lynch on “The Catch Up” podcast, Cyborg had this to say about the ‘PFL million dollar offer’ which was posted online by PFL CEO Donn Davis Cyborg had this to say, “I don’t really know what the goal was by putting the offer online, because I haven’t talked to them and I even after the Tweet haven’t spoken to them.” She went on to say, “I don’t like the way they want to try to do business with me, I’m really happy in Bellator” going on to say that she is already compensated the guaranteed money Donn Davis is offering her for a bout against Kayla.
Cyborg went on to say the she feels “sorry” for Kayla, because it is her own contract that prevented the fight from taking place earlier this year in Hawaii with Bellator MMA saying that Kayla’s manager actually had her locked into a contract with the PFL that prevented her from leaving to make the fight against Cyborg in Hawaii. The idea of an equal guarantee didn’t seem to sit well with Cyborg as she went on to say, “For this fight to happen it will have to be the most payday for my career and for this to happen it would have to be an 80-20 purse split”
MMA reporter James Lynch went on to explain how the model of a purse split is from Boxing where an athlete like Tyson Fury makes a larger guaranteed purse before Bellator MMA Champion went on to mention that “She has been fighting a long time, and is happy where she is at”. Cyborg went on to list an example in MMA where Amanda Nunes was UFC Champion and was paid 100K to show and 100K to win against Ronda Rousey who was coming from a loss and made a guarantee of 3 million dollars for the fight.
Champ Cris Cyborg said for this fight to happen it will need to be an 80-20 split because she is the A side.
Kayla who has been overpaid by the PFL in relationship to her ticket sales, TV ratings, event merchandising, and social media engagement will be fighting Friday from the UK giving us another opportunity to see what type of ratings success she is able to generate as she looks to continue the quest for her 3rd PFL Lightweight Championship. While Donn Davis mentioned a purse there was no mention of weight division as fans of Cris Cyborg know the Champion is the current Bellator MMA Featherweight Champion and the only Grand Slam Champion in the sport at the 145lbs featherweight division it would seem natural that a bout would take place in the more established Featherweight category of 145lbs. Champ Cris Cyborg and Bellator MMA promoter Scott Coker have had a successful partnership for over 13 years working together.
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