Cyborg Finally Arrives in the UFC Just as Rousey Sinks Deeper Into Hollywood

It seems appropriate somehow, in the wake of UFC President Dana White's admission yesterday on The Dan Patrick Show that even he doesn't know when (or if?) former UFC bantamweight women's champion Ronda Rousey plans to return to MMA, that just at the moment Rousey struck a three-picture development deal with the Lifetime Channel, the ancestral home of gauzy, soap opera femininity, the UFC's big stage is finally opening up to the arrival of Cris Cyborg, whose wake of MMA destruction would swallow and swamp the Lifetime offices whole and drown all the sentimental souls inside.

For five years, ever since Rousey started taking over Strikeforce's 135-pound division, the MMA world has been wanting to see her fight Cyborg (who owned that promotion's 145-pound division at the same time), but for some reason (Ronda's fear? Cyborg's PED use? Cosmic conspiracy?) it's never happened. How perfect then that the UFC finally put aside its reservations about Cyborg (not to mention its cruelty) just in time for Rousey to disappear. It's like they're two poles that can't exist in the same place at the same time.

And what a shame, too. Because Cyborg has spent most of her career dismantling women whose greatest fighting attribute, maybe their only fighting attribute, proved to be their courage. Aside from two decent fights with former champion Marloes Coenen (when is she coming to the UFC?) Cyborg's fighting life has walked a very fine line between sport and public execution. Some of her fights (with Jan Finney and Fiona Muxlow and Faith Van Duin in particular) were not so much MMA contests as they were travesties of fight promotion. Acts of brutality dressed up to look like prize fights. But in the UFC Cyborg is finally in a position to fight women who stand a chance against her, or at least deserve to be in the cage with her. That's not just great for women's MMA, it's great for Cyborg, whose soul must suffer every time she's forced to pummel some poor woman and pretend it was sporting.

And, of course, at the top of the food chain in women's MMA, no matter who wears the UFC bantamweight belt, sits Rousey. Miesha Tate may be the current champion but all roads in WMMA lead to Rousey and Cyborg. And deep down they must know that they need each other, that without a fight between them their legacies will be incomplete and awash with asterisks. How could Cyborg ever claim to be the best ever if she never fights the woman who turned women's MMA into a cultural phenomenon? And what would Rousey's legacy be if she disappeared from the UFC and into the pilllowy arms of Lifetime right at the moment Cyborg appeared at the gates? The two of them need each other if either hopes to retire with a satisfied mind and an easy conscience. Without a Rousey/Cyborg fight both women would be condemned to wander through their post-fighting lives like some kind of cursed wraith from an Irish folk tale: unable to find peace, with a great desire gnawing at their insides.

And that goes for us too, the MMA fans who have dreamed and wondered and philosophized and prognosticated over a fight between Rousey and Cyborg for five long years. Would Cyborg simply maul the smaller, less-striking-savvy Rousey with punches like she has everyone else or would the Brazilian's aggressive play right into Rousey's judo game, resulting in yet another giant hip toss and another armbar? It's a great debate, on par with the arguments that spawned the UFC 20 years ago: Whose style will win out? And we who have discussed and debated, who have waited so long and patiently, who have suffered so quietly through Cyborg's positive drug tests and weight-cutting refusals and Ronda's ugly taunting and cruelty, and who have tolerated Cyborg's misguided celebrations and abided Rousey's misguided movie acting—we have earned this fight. It's the least they can do for us.