Rousey vs Cyborg: Considering the Stakes, It's Hard to Separate Fact and Fiction

Ronda Rousey just torched another overmatched challenger in a matter of seconds. This time it was Bethe Correia, who found her face on UFC 190 posters opposite the undisputed ruler of female combat sports in the modern era.

When they met face-to-face in real life, it was much more violent than a photoshopped pose and some modestly patriotic colors. It was a half-minute or so of frenetic swinging that ended with Correia planted facedown on the canvas.

And so it began again, the talk of a fight between Rousey and longtime 145-pound women’s stalwart Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino, the only viable competitive option in a world where no woman who fights as a bantamweight has any hope against the UFC champion.

Justino is a born killer, ferociously stacking bodies in her wake with blazing power shots and a ruthlessness that would be delightful to behold if it wasn’t so unfortunate for her opponents. Similar to Rousey, a Cyborg fight is more of an execution than an athletic contest, but Cyborg tends to end fights more seismically, landing shots that make you cringe for how savage they are in both intent and result.

For those interested in seeing Rousey take a step up in competition, Cyborg is the fight they want to see. Everyone knows Rousey is the best in the UFC because she’s proven it repeatedly, and the division she’s fighting in has consistently proven to be light-years behind her. But is she the best there is, period?

That’s a point of contention for anyone who has followed the trajectory of these two women as they’ve rocketed to the top of women’s MMA.

In a statement released to AXS TV, Justino argued that she can’t get to 135 pounds for a fight with Rousey due to medical concerns, but those concerns are undermined somewhat by the fact she was busted for steroid use in 2011. She’s offered the fight at featherweight, her natural class where she holds the Invicta FC title, and at 140 pounds, which would be a logical compromise for the two.

For her part, Rousey continues to insist on 135 pounds as the weight to engage and has lobbed wild insults and blunt accusations of continued steroid abuse, despite Justino’s otherwise clean record both before and after her 2011 test.

Backed up by her bosses at the UFC, who are either staunchly in support of her or uncomfortably lauding her at any given time, there is a growing sentiment that the fight is ready to go if Cyborg can drop the extra 10 pounds.

It’s a weird situation, because the biggest women’s fight—one of the biggest fights in general—MMA has ever seen is right there on the table, and everyone involved can get rich from it. But a few pounds and some ego is preventing it.

There’s also the degree of control that the UFC has over the narrative of the situation, which is enormous, considering they essentially run the sport itself at this point, coloring the perception of fans and media.

The promotion gets to use Justino as a stepping stone for Rousey without the two ever having to fight, subtly painting her as being disinterested or too scared to cut the extra few pounds for her chance at the UFC’s golden child.

Their influence is so broad that, while Justino may respond to a small media outlet in Brazil or to an MMA website that few people visit, it simply gets drowned out by the dozens of major outlets running stories along the lines of "Rousey Tells Steroid Cheat Cyborg It's 135 or Nothing” to get their traffic up.

This, of course, occurs with total ignorance to the fact that Rousey has fought at 145 pounds multiple times and was the best female American judoka in Olympic history at an even higher weight class.

It ignores the fact that Justino walks around at 175 pounds of lean muscle and is an utterly hulking specimen, even when she hits the featherweight mark. It ignores that fact that both sides are openly agreeing to the fight, and some negotiation on weight would replace all this talk with action.

It’s one of the strangest fights to ever not quite happen for the UFC, and given the sheer volume of influence they have and the amount of banter among parties involved it’s harder than ever to know what’s true and what isn’t.

From the outside, in its simplest form, it appears that the two fighters have agreed to fight, and they’ve found a promoter willing to promote it. But the fight isn’t happening, and there’s a whole bunch of bluster being produced as to why that is.

Can Cyborg not get to bantamweight because she's still using steroids?

Is Rousey so obsessed with leaving the sport undefeated that she's afraid to put it on the line against the only woman who might be her equal?

Is Dana White afraid that his headline-grabbing golden goose would be less appealing to the masses with a loss on her record?

Is it some combination of these notions or others that’s keeping the fight from happening?

Nobody actually knows because only the fighters and the promotion are in a position to confirm anything, and it’s hard to distinguish truth from lies given the stakes.

How much is true and how much isn’t almost doesn’t matter, though. It’s time to get the fight done, because there are only so many more times people are going to pay $60 to watch a sneeze-and-you-miss-it main event between an Olympian and an accounting student that's immediately followed by questions like, “When is the Cyborg fight going to happen?”

Make the fight happen. How you get there and who gets to spin the narrative on the way to it should be the least of everyone’s worries.

Follow me on Twitter @matthewjryder.