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In the wake of Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey's first title defense, all the WMMA talk has surrounded her fighting former Featherweight champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos. Santos spent her Strikeforce career dominating the 145 lb. division before testing positive for steroids following her bout with Hiroko Yamanaka in December. With Santos's year long suspension nearing its end, both women have been discussing the possibility of a WMMA super fight.
Monday night, MMA Live got Rousey's thoughts on fighting Cyborg:
You know what? That girl's been cheating for her entire career and she's not the champion. She was stripped of her belt. It's not like she was fighting before and suddenly you saw huge muscle mass increase in her last fight. Everyone can tell she's been cheating her entire career. The whole time she's had that belt, I think, is just a fraud. If she comes off the juice she won't have a problem making the weight.
Now that she sees she's probably going to get her but kicked...she's saying she can't make it. Who else is she gonna fight besides me anyway? I got a whole line of girls waiting to fight me and she needs to fight me or else she's pretty much done.
She has to come fight me. She has no other options and I don't owe her anything.
On Saturday, Rousey went out of her way to challenge Santos. Despite that and her strong words here, she's actually making it more difficult for the fight to happen. As Fraser Coffeen explained, weight class disputes have a long history of destroying potential inter-divisional bouts. Santos went on record last week to say she would not be able to make the 135 lb. Bantamweight limit. If that's true and Rousey refuses to compromise in a Catchweight bout, it's unlike that this fight will come to fruition.
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