Holly Holm wants Cris Cyborg rematch, still hasn’t watched first fight 8

Holly Holm has yet to watch the film of her UFC 219 main event loss to UFC featherweight champion Cris Cyborg.

But she doesn’t need to see the clips to know that somewhere down the road, she wants to fight Cyborg again.

“I would definitely want that rematch,” Holm said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour.

The former UFC bantamweight champion explained that she isn’t usually in a rush to watch replays of her fights. She’ll probably get around to examining the Dec. 30 bout — in which she became the first fighter to take Cyborg a full five rounds — when she gets serious about starting another training camp.

“If I get back into training camp, I probably will,’ Holm said. “I’ve seen clips here and there. Mostly highlights of her hitting me, basically that’s how it went in that fight. But I know I had some good moments, there were a couple times I hit her with some good solid shots and I just felt like, you know, in the clinch I was doing some good things. There’s always some things to build on. It always takes me awhile to go back to my fight.”

Cyborg, of course, was back in the headlines in March because she returned to action just over two months after her win over Holm. Cyborg headlined UFC 222 and scored a first-round knockout of Yana Kunitskaya, who is a training partner of Holm’s at Albuquerque’s JacksonWink MMA.

“We’re mostly just good training partners, you know?” Holm said. “I try to be there every day, be a sparring partner for her, be a grappling partner for her. There aren’t a lot of girls our size obviously, we’re the only two girls at that weight, so, I just try to make myself accessible to whatever she needs.”

She also believe Kunitskaya made the best out of an overwhelming situation.

“We all know Cyborg is a strong fighter, she hits hard and she’s always so aggressive,” Holm said. “And Yana, I mean, until the end of the fight Yana had some good moments, you know? She had a takedown, she was on top, she got control of the cage and took her back. So it not that it was all bad for Yana. She had some moments and some things she’s going to learn from this fight and just go forward.”

Holm indicated she’d like to get back in the cage by the summer and hasn’t yet decided if her next fight will be at 145 or 135. She also doesn’t anticipate that she’ll get a Cyborg rematch straightway, considering that she did, after all, lose the fight in a clear-cut manner.

But that won’t stop her from trying to get back into contention.

“It’s not something I’m putting all my thought into,” Holm said. “I really don’t think that can be my next fight, I bet you it will be something else. I don’t know what it might be, maybe 135, maybe 145, I’m not really putting too much into thinking it has to be one way or the other. I guess it’s just one of those things that I always want to beat the unbeatable, I guess.

“I think about all my fights, I always want to avenge my losses,” Holm added. “I want that fight back I know it’s a lot of work and the biggest women’s fighter in all the divisions of the UFC, but, it’s also I feel like I can do it and I want to do it again.”

As for what might go different the next time out, Holm didn’t want to tip her hand.

“There are a couple things, basic things, just I could have been more active in situations and been controlling them,” Holm said. “Every fight is different, too. There’s things I have, goals I want to get better at. … If her and I got a rematch, it still would be a different fight. No two fights are exactly the same.”