Cris Cyborg thinks Amanda Nunes ‘will be my last’ fight in the UFC

Cris Cyborg teases about a potential departure from the UFC in 2019.

Esther Lin, MMA Fighting

The UFC is trying to book a superfight between women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg and bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes for the second half of 2018, but the fact that the date and location of the bout remains up in the air is opening the door for it to be Cyborg’s last fight in the Octagon.

Cyborg last competed in March 2018 when she stopped Yana Kunitskaya in the first round at UFC 222. Nunes entered the cage two months later at UFC 224, defeating Raquel Pennington via fifth-round TKO in Rio de Janeiro.

While Cyborg is targeting the UFC’s Sept. 8 pay-per-view show for her superfight, Nunes wants the date to be at the Dec. 29 card in Las Vegas.

“I think this fight will be my last in the UFC, because my contract expires in March,” Cyborg told Brazilian television show Combate News, “and doing this fight in December, I think it will be the last that people will see me fight.”

Cyborg has complained for a long time about the fact that the UFC hasn’t built the featherweight division to create contenders to challenge her for the belt, and she isn’t happy about the selection of fighters for the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter, which features heavyweights and female featherweights.

The featherweights slated to compete on TUF 28 are Leah Letson, Larissa Pacheco, Marciea Allen, Pannie Kianzad, Bea Malecki, Julija Stoliarenko, Katharina Lehner, and Macy Chiasson. Six of those eight athletes fought the majority of their careers at bantamweight.

“They are doing the TUF house and cut all the girls from 145,” Cyborg said. “They only added girls that can make 135. Holly Holm said she doesn’t want to fight now. There’s Pam Sorenson, she tried out for TUF and didn’t make it, I think they didn’t add her because she can’t make 135. There’s Cindy Dandois, who beat Megan Anderson as well. There’s Ediane Gomes, who sends me messages challenging me all the time, who is also from my division.

”There are girls that can fight, from my division. But they don’t want that, they only want me to fight Amanda. But we have to wait 10 months, almost a year to make this fight happen.”