The first ever UFC Women’s Featherweight Champion is Germaine De Randamie and her first title defense is expected to come against former Invicta FC Featherweight Champion Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos.
UFC Hall Of Fame member Bas Rutten is a firm believer in De Randamie and he feels that the UFC champion can hang with Cyborg.
“Jorina Baars, she’s from Holland, she beat Cyborg in Lion Fight. So yeah, I do think that [de Randamie] can hang with her,” Rutten said on The MMA Hour. “But I think once Cyborg gets ahold of her and she can throw her down, we’re going to have a big problem. [De Randamie] really wants to keep this fight standing against her, and keep the distance between them. You want to stay outside the distance just enough that you can counter, but do not go clinching with Cyborg. I think that’s a bad thing.”
Rutten has seen this kind of striking talent in De Randamie a while back and now he says that the champion is putting it all together.
“I saw this in her a long time ago,” Rutten said. “Fred Royers was her original coach, and he contacted me six years ago and he asked if she could come and train here, a few sessions with me. So she went over here and we trained a little bit, what she had to work on, because she’s a striker as well — a phenomenal striker — so I worked with her and then she went on. And I knew that, in the striking department — once you’re 47-0 and you’re in Holland, and you do it in Europe, it’s a different kind of level there, the striking, than it is overseas. It simply is. ... The striking is just at a real high level because everybody is doing it. It’s almost like soccer. You’ve got gyms everywhere. Every week, there’s fights everywhere, in bars, in little sport gyms. Whatever it is. There’s a lot of Thai boxing, and because a lot of people do it, a lot of people are very good at it. So I knew that her striking was going to beat Holly Holm’s striking, although I’m very impressed with Holly Holm as well.”
De Randamie defeated former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Holly Holm to win the gold at UFC 208.
Cyborg recently gave up her Invicta FC title so she can get one step closer to fighting De Randamie, which Cyborg wants to happen in Brazil at UFC 212.
