Top 10 most important UFC women’s main events
By Drake Riggs
9. Cris Cyborg vs Holly Holm – UFC 219, 2017
There have been few fighters in the world of MMA that have been quite as dominant and avoided as the queen of the featherweights, Cris “Cyborg” Justino.
After making her name and winning world titles in each Strikeforce and Invicta FC, Cyborg began to be continually attached to the longtime bantamweight ruler, Ronda Rousey. Fans and analysts alike all had their takes on how a potential super fight would go between the two but it just never ended up happening.
By the time that Cyborg finally made her long-awaited UFC debut at UFC 198 in 2016, Rousey had already been dethroned and had seemingly vanished from the public eye. Cyborg had to carry on with her own business though.
Entering the UFC and competing in two catchweight bouts at 140 pounds, Cyborg had drained her body to a point where she needed an allotted amount of time to recover properly. But the UFC didn’t feel like waiting for her to start their featherweight division so they made an inaugural 145-pound title fight between Germaine de Randamie and the former UFC bantamweight champion, Holly Holm.
de Randamie would go on to win the fight but not without controversy. In her post-fight interview, she would be asked about fighting the woman that everyone viewed as the true champion, Cyborg. de Randamie would speak about needing to get a hand issue figured out then sometime after the event would decline to fight Cyborg due to her history with performance-enhancing drugs.
This resulted in de Randamie being stripped of the title and now Cyborg was set for her shot.
The 17-1 Brazilian, Cyborg would take out the three-time Invicta FC bantamweight champion, Tonya Evinger at UFC 214 to finally become a UFC champion.
Her first challenger as UFC champion would come in the form of a former one, the woman who failed to capture the inaugural UFC 145-pound gold initially in Holm.
After her defeat of Rousey, Holm looked like the next big star and to a degree she was. But the results in the cage didn’t end up turning out the way she would have liked. She would lose her first title defense to Miesha Tate than the two that followed that before picking up another win and getting a second shot at the featherweight title.
This time for Holm, it would be against the fighter we all expected it to be against when the division’s official creation was announced.
One of Cyborg’s biggest detractions has been that many believe she’s fought weak or undersized competition. The fight with Holm would, therefore, pose a big opportunity for her to continue to solidify that she was legit by taking out a former UFC and boxing world champion.
Holm would start out well early on compared to Cyborg’s past opposition and even be given the first two rounds by the judges on the scorecards despite only landing a combined 12 strikes to Cyborg’s 45 in those two rounds.
As the fight went on, Cyborg would continue to show that she was more than just a berserker and continually time and counter Holm’s distance combinations and by the fight’s end had almost out struck Holm by 100 with 131 to 48.
This fight was a big stepping stone for Cyborg as she showed that she really can hang with the highest level of combat sports athletes.