Fourth promotional title would be reminder Cris Cyborg still belongs in GOAT conversation

In the eyes of many, the subject of the greatest of all-time in women’s mixed martial arts was settled on Dec. 30, 2018.

Make no mistake: Amanda Nunes earned as dominant a victory one could ever hope to achieve when she knocked out the fighter who previously was the overwhelming pick, Cris Cyborg, in 51 seconds back at UFC 232, to add the UFC featherweight title to a collection which already included the bantamweight belt.

But earning GOAT status is a marathon, not a sprint. And on Saturday night, Cyborg will fight champion Julia Budd for the latter’s Bellator featherweight title at The Forum in nearby Inglewood, Calif. in the main event of Bellator 238.

With a victory, Cyborg would become the first fighter in modern MMA, regardless of gender, to win championships in major-league promotions. A Bellator title would expand upon a resume which includes Strikeforce, Invicta FC, and UFC belts, earned over a span of time stretching back more than a decade.

If you look at the history of MMA’s most important historical promotions — such as UFC, PRIDE, Strikeforce, Bellator, Invicta (which is now mainly a UFC feeder promotion, but for years was the premier spot for women’s MMA), and the WEC (which hosted the de facto world titles in 135 and 145 during the promotion’s heyday) — you’ll come across several fighters who have held titles in two. MMA Junkie stats guru Mike Bohn and I couldn’t come up with a fighter who’s held three, even if you become more generous with the definition of “major league” and include the likes of DREAM and WSOF.

Maintaining that level of dominance in the same weight class while navigating the instability of competing in four separate promotions over that long a period of time unheard of.

When Cyborg beat Gina Carano for the Strikeforce belt in the landmark first major MMA event headlined by a women’s fight in 2009, the sport’s major champions included the likes of Brock Lesnar, B.J. Penn, and Mike Brown.

Cyborg’s still going.

And yes, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room: Cyborg popped for steroids back in 2011. Some of you rushed down to the comments section to write about that before you even read this far. For some, PED suspensions are a permanent disqualification from GOAT consideration, whether that’s Cyborg, Jon Jones, or Anderson Silva, and you have to respect the opinion of people who are consistent in their application of this standard.

But here’s another thing: Cyborg has fought 12 times since returning from a one-year suspension, and has passed every drug test she’s taken since (she was exonerated from her one U.S. Anti-Doping Agency blemish several years ago, which isn’t the last time we’ve heard USADA go “whoops, my bad”).

And she was working for a promoter who seemed at times to be actively working against her in the UFC. Ronda Rousey, after trying to troll Cyborg into a fight early in her Strikeforce days, plainly wanted nothing to do with Cyborg once she broke big. And UFC president Dana White ran interference for his golden child, mocking Cyborg with schoolyard insults and for years insisting a woman of Cyborg’s size cut down to 135 pounds. Imagine White trying to get Jones to cut down to welterweight to get a fight he wanted.

Anyway, Cyborg persisted through conditions that would constitute HR violations in a normal workplace and continued to thrive. So sure, she made bad choices years ago, and some will continue to bash her like a piñata for it. She’s also done her penance and then some since.

We’re not in any way arguing that Nunes isn’t the best women’s fighter of the moment, or that she hasn’t been on a phenomenal run against a ridiculous level of competition.

We also know that Germaine de Randamie recently fought Nunes, the same “GDR” who became the only major world champion of note in MMA history who specifically relinquished a championship to avoid meeting the top contender, and that top contender was Cyborg.

And Bellator’s women’s featherweight division is simply deeper than the UFC’s. Cyborg drubbed top UFC contender Felicia Spencer on her way out the door, and Nunes has yet to defend that 145 belt, 13 months after winning it.

Imagine if the politics of MMA had made it so that Cain Velasquez and Junior Dos Santos never tangled again after “JDS” knocked out Velasquez in 64 seconds to win the UFC heavyweight title back in 2011, and how perceptions of both fighters would have been changed. The difference between now and then is that the UFC of that era was hellbent on cornering all the world’s best talent. Today, the company’s multi-billion-dollar corporate parent will let talents the level of Cyborg and Demetrious Johnson walk.

No doubt Nunes, who has four career losses, has been on one hell of a run, including being the only fighter in 13 years to defeat Cyborg.

She won the UFC bantamweight title in 2016. Let’s see where she is in 2027. Let’s see if she’s doing what Cyborg is setting out to achieve on Saturday. If Cyborg can win yet another title, in a division deeper than the one over which Nunes presides, then this will serve as a reminder the GOAT conversation is far from settled.