'Cyborg' Justino must cut 25 pounds by Friday to make weight
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/cyborg...ounds-by-friday-to-make-weight-175829454.html
Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino weighed 165 pounds on Monday, leaving her 25 pounds to cut by Friday’s weigh-in. (Getty Images)
The torture that Cris “Cyborg” Justino is putting her body through to make 140 pounds for a fight Saturday against Lina Lansberg in Brasilia, Brazil makes little to no sense given that she is fighting at a catch weight and doesn’t have a weight class in the UFC.
Justino is a big woman who for years was touted as a potential rival to former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey.
The UFC would never consider a catch weight bout between Rousey and Justino even though it was plainly obvious she was too big to make the bantamweight limit of 135 pounds.
When the company finally put Justino on a show, in May at UFC 198, it did it at a catch weight of 140 pounds.
A documentary showed the extreme measures she went through to make that weight, though she rehydrated successfully and stopped Leslie Smith in the first round in Curitiba, Brazil.
But given UFC president Dana White’s steadfast refusal to create a women’s featherweight division, there is no reason to force Justino to make a catch weight. If she’s doing one-off fights, it makes sense to allow her to do it at 145 pounds, which she makes safely.
Justino weighed 165 pounds on Monday and told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday that she was “around 160,” meaning that she still had to drop 20 pounds to reach the limit of 140 by Friday morning.
A documentary film her team released about her weight cut showed her and her highly regarded nutritionist George Lockhart arguing over his methods, including his decision to put her on birth control pills as a means of shedding weight.
Justino, though, is optimistic she’ll make it.
“I have faith in my team and I have faith in God,” she said. “I am focused on the fight because I know that my team understands what I need to do and so I do what they say and I can focus on the fight.”
She told Yahoo Sports that her best weight class is 155 pounds, which isn’t offered in women’s mixed martial arts. She is the Invicta featherweight champion and makes 145 successfully, though she said, “it’s a hard cut.”
Lansberg might be her toughest MMA fight in some time. A Muay Thai champion, Lansberg is 6-1 in MMA and has won six in a row after losing her debut.
Justino, too, lost her pro debut and has won every MMA fight since, reeling off 16 consecutive wins.
Losing isn’t something she is familiar with, though she did lose a Muay Thai fight to Jorina Baars in Las Vegas on March 28, 2014.
Though she has often been portrayed poorly, Justino is a compassionate and kind person who has taken much abuse because of her physical size and her muscular build and handled herself with grace.
“I prayed to God and he told me it was OK,” she said. “Maybe it was my time to lose, and it gave me the chance to learn. I like to challenge myself, which is why I fought Jorina [in Muay Thai], because I knew she was the champion and that was a test for me.
“I met her at the party [after the fight] and she came up and she hugged me and said, ‘Cris, I just want to thank you. It’s been a couple of years since I had the fight and I needed the money so badly. Thank you for doing it for me.’ People don’t know that and it made me feel good like, maybe there is a reason for this loss.”
Justino praised Smith for doing much the same thing for her as she did for Baars. Smith moved up in weight to agree to take the fight with Justino when few others would.
It is somewhat of a fraternity, Justino said.
“We’re all here to help each other,” she said. “We are there to fight and when we’re in the cage, or the ring, we fight as hard as we can. But we all make sacrifices to do this and so we have to help each other out.
“Leslie went up to 140 and she went to Brazil and said, ‘I’ll fight Cyborg,’ and that helped my dream [of fighting in the UFC] come true. She’s a real fighter, win or lose, and that’s how I want to be.”
Justino is a big attraction and a fight with Rousey would mean huge dollars. Size, though, is an issue and it’s clear that Justino shouldn’t be pushing her body so hard to make 140.
Though White said he’s not interested in a featherweight division, it would make sense to create one for Justino given that she has such a high profile.
White also once said he wouldn’t put women in the UFC at all, and now the women’s business is massive.
No one knows how truly good Justino is because she’s had to fight at an artificially small weight. If the UFC won’t concede and make a division for her, the least it can do is make her catchweight fights at the featherweight limit so that fans can see her when she isn’t drained from having cut those last five pounds
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/cyborg...ounds-by-friday-to-make-weight-175829454.html
Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino weighed 165 pounds on Monday, leaving her 25 pounds to cut by Friday’s weigh-in. (Getty Images)
The torture that Cris “Cyborg” Justino is putting her body through to make 140 pounds for a fight Saturday against Lina Lansberg in Brasilia, Brazil makes little to no sense given that she is fighting at a catch weight and doesn’t have a weight class in the UFC.
Justino is a big woman who for years was touted as a potential rival to former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey.
The UFC would never consider a catch weight bout between Rousey and Justino even though it was plainly obvious she was too big to make the bantamweight limit of 135 pounds.
When the company finally put Justino on a show, in May at UFC 198, it did it at a catch weight of 140 pounds.
A documentary showed the extreme measures she went through to make that weight, though she rehydrated successfully and stopped Leslie Smith in the first round in Curitiba, Brazil.
But given UFC president Dana White’s steadfast refusal to create a women’s featherweight division, there is no reason to force Justino to make a catch weight. If she’s doing one-off fights, it makes sense to allow her to do it at 145 pounds, which she makes safely.
Justino weighed 165 pounds on Monday and told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday that she was “around 160,” meaning that she still had to drop 20 pounds to reach the limit of 140 by Friday morning.
A documentary film her team released about her weight cut showed her and her highly regarded nutritionist George Lockhart arguing over his methods, including his decision to put her on birth control pills as a means of shedding weight.
Justino, though, is optimistic she’ll make it.
“I have faith in my team and I have faith in God,” she said. “I am focused on the fight because I know that my team understands what I need to do and so I do what they say and I can focus on the fight.”
She told Yahoo Sports that her best weight class is 155 pounds, which isn’t offered in women’s mixed martial arts. She is the Invicta featherweight champion and makes 145 successfully, though she said, “it’s a hard cut.”
Lansberg might be her toughest MMA fight in some time. A Muay Thai champion, Lansberg is 6-1 in MMA and has won six in a row after losing her debut.
Justino, too, lost her pro debut and has won every MMA fight since, reeling off 16 consecutive wins.
Losing isn’t something she is familiar with, though she did lose a Muay Thai fight to Jorina Baars in Las Vegas on March 28, 2014.
Though she has often been portrayed poorly, Justino is a compassionate and kind person who has taken much abuse because of her physical size and her muscular build and handled herself with grace.
“I prayed to God and he told me it was OK,” she said. “Maybe it was my time to lose, and it gave me the chance to learn. I like to challenge myself, which is why I fought Jorina [in Muay Thai], because I knew she was the champion and that was a test for me.
“I met her at the party [after the fight] and she came up and she hugged me and said, ‘Cris, I just want to thank you. It’s been a couple of years since I had the fight and I needed the money so badly. Thank you for doing it for me.’ People don’t know that and it made me feel good like, maybe there is a reason for this loss.”
Justino praised Smith for doing much the same thing for her as she did for Baars. Smith moved up in weight to agree to take the fight with Justino when few others would.
It is somewhat of a fraternity, Justino said.
“We’re all here to help each other,” she said. “We are there to fight and when we’re in the cage, or the ring, we fight as hard as we can. But we all make sacrifices to do this and so we have to help each other out.
“Leslie went up to 140 and she went to Brazil and said, ‘I’ll fight Cyborg,’ and that helped my dream [of fighting in the UFC] come true. She’s a real fighter, win or lose, and that’s how I want to be.”
Justino is a big attraction and a fight with Rousey would mean huge dollars. Size, though, is an issue and it’s clear that Justino shouldn’t be pushing her body so hard to make 140.
Though White said he’s not interested in a featherweight division, it would make sense to create one for Justino given that she has such a high profile.
White also once said he wouldn’t put women in the UFC at all, and now the women’s business is massive.
No one knows how truly good Justino is because she’s had to fight at an artificially small weight. If the UFC won’t concede and make a division for her, the least it can do is make her catchweight fights at the featherweight limit so that fans can see her when she isn’t drained from having cut those last five pounds
Not sure how many more of these cuts she has in her.
