Bellator women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg does not consider herself the greatest of all time in large part because she does not believe such a thing even exists.
Cris Cyborg’s run of going on a 13-year winning streak is one the most respected feats in MMA history. It is this streak that made her the most feared woman in the sport. When Cyborg captured UFC gold with a victory over Tonya Evinger for the featherweight championship at UFC 214 followed by a successful title defense over Holly Holm at UFC 219, it was hard not to put her on the shortlist of the greatest women’s mixed martial artists of all time. But at the time she was the UFC women’s featherweight champion until today as the Bellator women’s featherweight champion, Cris Cyborg has never considered herself to be the GOAT.
“I believe that, when you think you’re the best of all time, you stop learning,” Cyborg told Super Lutas recently. “So I always kept that out of my mind, because I still want to learn much more.”
But it isn’t just herself that Cris Cyborg believes is not the WMMA GOAT. She believes that no one person is deserving of that title, not even the woman who is widely viewed as such and the only woman to defeat Cyborg since 2005, Amanda Nunes.
“Many women did a lot for the sport,” Cyborg said. “Me, Gina Carano, Amanda Nunes, who has won two belts. I think many women are part of this. Before me, other women were already fighting: Ana Marina India, Carina Damm, Carmem ‘Casca Grossa’. All the girls who are fighting now, they are building it, too. You can’t name one. We are all achieving the same, which is making WMMA grow.”
Incidentally, there is one name missing from Cyborg’s list of praise: former nemesis and first-ever UFC bantamweight champion Rouda Rousey. Clearly, Rousey would not be exempt from Cyborg’s opinion of there not being a GOAT of women’s MMA, but her current boss, Bellator President Scott Coker begs to differ. He has said on multiple occasions that he believes Cris Cyborg is deserving of being called the GOAT, whether she likes to hear it or not.
Do you agree with Cris Cyborg? Is there no such thing as a WMMA GOAT?
