UFC President Dana White recently revealed that the promotion is out of the “Cyborg business,” meaning that former UFC Women’s Featherweight Champion Cyborg is a free agent.
As White reflects on the whole episode with Cyborg, one thing he wouldn’t do is change how the situation was handled.
“No, I wouldn’t do anything different,” White told reporters during a media scrum after the latest Contender Series episode (via Mike Bohn & John Morgan of MMA Junkie). “The one thing I’m glad I did was I pushed her to make sure she fought Amanda Nunes, because she didn’t want that fight the first time, let alone the second time. She wanted Cindy Dandois or Pam Sorensen. Those are the fights she wanted, and she was turning down Amanda Nunes. I said, ‘That’s not going to happen.’ So we kept pushing and pushing and pushing and finally we got her to take the Amanda Nunes fight. I’m happy I did that. Other than that I wouldn’t change one thing in the last five years on Cyborg.”
Cyborg is now free to sign with any promotion she chooses, with both the PFL and Bellator MMA making overtures about possibly signing the former champion.
White also believes that it must’ve killed Cyborg to apologize for a recently altered video of a confrontation between Cyborg and the UFC President.
“Dealing with her has been a nightmare the entire time she’s been here,” White said. “It’s been a bad experience dealing with Cyborg since Day 1. We brought in her after she tested positive for steroids and we made her a clean athlete with the best drug testing policy in all of sports the entire time she was here. When she talks about her legacy and her brand, her legacy and her brand, nothing’s better than knowing she’s a clean athlete after testing positive for steroids and all the negativity that surrounded her about being a dirty athlete. We bring her in here, we do all this stuff and she was just never happy. Never happy, complaining about everything – she was a nightmare to deal with, and at the end of the day she knows, I know, Amanda Nunes knows, I tried to make that Nunes fight. She doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want it. She gets mad when I say I don’t blame her. I don’t blame her. If that was Amanda Nunes (at UFC 240) I think everyone can agree what would’ve happened in that fight. She’s unhappy, we’re unhappy, she lies and does that thing. See ya later. Have a nice life. I don’t think there’s any peace between me and Cyborg. Whether you like me or you don’t like me, whatever your opinion is it doesn’t matter. What she did was dirty. It was dirty what she did with the video and all this other stuff in it. Meanwhile she’s out here saying she better get an apology from me? Yeah. I got an apology from her. Because what she did was one of the dirtiest things. It had to kill her to apologize to me. Kill her to do it. But what she did is one of the dirtiest things you can do to somebody. That’s why she apologized.”
The UFC President also revealed that the UFC Women’s Featherweight Division will continue on without one of it’s biggest stars.
