UFC president Dana White recently announced that the promotion was cutting ties with former women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg. White and Cyborg have had a rocky relationship for years and it reached its boiling point following UFC 240.
As a result, White said the UFC will be passing on re-signing Cyborg and they will not take advantage of their ability to match any offer.
On Tuesday, August 6, White spoke with the media and addressed the Cyborg situation following the latest Dana White Contender Series event. White unloaded on Cyborg and discussed how she was a “nightmare” to deal with.
“Dealing with her has been a nightmare the entire time she’s been here,” White said, as transcribed by MMAjunkie.com. “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.
White was also unhappy with Cyborg posting a doctored video that falsely characterized a backstage interaction between the two.
Cyborg admitted the video was edited and later apologized.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0rouzrH7aw/?utm_source=ig_embed
“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,” he added. “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.”
It will be interesting to see what is next for Cyborg, but she should have no shortage of options whether it be from Bellator, PFL, or another promotion.
