Ronda Rousey: I’m Cris Cyborg’s Only Option

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Ronda Rousey could fight Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos at 145 pounds, but she doesn’t see the need to.

“I think Cyborg really doesn’t have any other options besides me,” Rousey told the Sherdog Radio Network’s “It’s Time” show with Bruce Buffer. “I think she’s a victim of her own cheating, whereas when she was doped up and she looked like she was so head-over-heels above all these girls, it made the women’s division look bad. Then she cleaned out her own division because of that. Now she’s having to deal with the consequences of it. No one’s going to want to fight a cheater. I’m pretty much her only option and I’m chock full of options.”

Santos has not fought since failing a steroid test last December. She’s serving a one-year suspension and was also stripped of her Strikeforce 145-pound title. Meanwhile Rousey has emerged as a star. The promotion’s 135-pound champion, she challenged Cyborg to cut weight for a matchup, but Cyborg responded by inviting Rousey to move back up to 145.

“I could,” said Rousey, who has fought at 145. “I could, but I’m choosing not to because honestly, I don’t trust any of the drug testing. I’ve been doing this a very, very long time and I was in the Olympics with the most stringent drug testing in the world. You know a lot of those people are doping. There’s new advances in drug testing every single year because people find new ways to cheat. The only way I can really feel like it would be a fair fight is if it’s down at 135. If she’s doped to the gills and making 145, it’s not really that farfetched for me to think that someone not on steroids could move down a division.”

Cyborg has said, however, that her doctors advised her against dropping to 135 pounds. Rousey doesn’t buy it.

“Is this the same doctor that was giving you the steroids?” Rousey said. “What do you think he tells his other girls when you’re pumped full of roids, pummeling them in the face? It just sounds so hypocritical to me. I can’t stand it.”

The way Rousey sees it, a fight at 135 would give Cyborg a chance to redeem herself. If it doesn’t come together, then Rousey is confident she’ll have plenty of other options to pursue -- and she’s confident that Cyborg won’t.

“She’s been exposed as a fraud,” Rousey said. “She hasn’t won a real fight, a real recorded fight, in two years. For her to come back from her suspension and be like, ‘I want a title fight and I want it at the weight I want, and I want, I want, I want’ -- where are all these demands and sense of entitlement coming from? Shouldn’t you be wanting to prove yourself to everybody else? That, ‘Yeah, I can do this. I don’t need drugs. I can make 135. I can beat her anyway.’ I think she’s showing a lot of insecurity on her part.”

Listen to the full interview (beginning at 13:13).