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Cris Cyborg has been getting a lot of attention as of late, the type of attention I’m sure no fighter would like to have. Failing a drug test after her bout with Hiroko Yamanaka on December 17th, Cyborg has been the target of a lot of backlash from the MMA community as a whole. Certainly the backlash is deserving, but I’d argue that this is not the normal type of backlash most fighters are used to when they fail a drug test, but then again, this is not just any fighter, it’s a top ranked female fighter, and for a community which still struggles to see women fight, perhaps the amount of backlash is understandable.

Cris went on SporTV.com to share her frustration with one Ronda Rousey, who made remarks that she always knew Cris was a cheater:

I don’t like to talk too much, I like to act instead. But now my hands are tied, I am suspended. This will be the first and last time I will talk. First of all, (Ronda Rousey) has been running away from me for a long time. We were going to fight, she talked a lot but left our division. And now she’s starting to talk because she knows that our fight will be difficult to happen. It’s easy to talk. She’s saying things that she shouldn’t be saying which hurts the sport. She’s directly affirming that I have used things before and disrespecting the Athletic Commission. In all of the fights I’ve had I passed the drug tests. What happened now was a mistake. I always respect my opponents, but with Ronda it will be different. She will have a year to train, that is, if she has the courage to throw hands with me. I will continue to train, I will compete in other sports such as jiu-jitsu and wrestling. It was a mistake, but it was good because I’ll continue to train and improve. She’ll have a year to get ready.

She also talked a little more about failing the test, and that she’ll take this mistake as a positive and that other fighters should take the opportunity to learn from this as well:

I was having troubles losing weight and I didn’t know it had a banned substance. I made a mistake of not getting it cleared by a doctor. I was told it was just to lose weight. My biggest problem (getting ready for a fight) is to lose the weight. I was absent from fighting for two years, and it’s harder to lose the weight, but I never had to do this (steroids). It was not to get stronger, only to lose weight. It was a fatality. I don’t need anything to win a fight. I have a clear conscious. I don’t think it would have been any different (had I not got caught), because I didn’t have an opponent anyway.

We learn from our mistakes. I was not the first to take it and won’t be the last. I hope that this will serve as an experience to other fighters. People need to inform themselves before taking anything. What I have built inside MMA will not end because of this.