Germaine de Randamie refuses to fight Cris Cyborg

UFC women’s featherweight champion Germaine de Randamie won the title through the oddest route in league history. She had been outside the top 10 at bantamweight and won the belt by beating former 135 champ Holly Holm, who had been on a two-fight losing streak, now three.

The UFC had made the decision to add the division when it appeared that Cris Cyborg, who had been brought in to drop weight to fight Ronda Rousey, was not going to be able to do so. However, Cyborg needed time to recover from the brutal weight cuts she had subjected herself to. And then a doctor-prescribed drug to reestablish the normal functioning of her endocrine system was flagged by an anti-doping test. She was eventually issued a retroactive Therapeutic Use Exemption. So the UFC went ahead with Holm vs. de Randamie instead of Cyborg vs. a featherweight.

Now GDR’s manager Brian Butler tells Ariel Helwani for MMAFighting.com that the champion does not intend to fight Cyborg.

Germaine and her team have talked, and the position is that she will not fight Cyborg because Cyborg is a known and proven cheater,” he said. “Even after so much scrutiny has been put on Cyborg, she still managed to pop for something and will always be a person of suspicion who is trying to beat the system rather than just conforming to the rules.

For that reason, Germaine and her team don’t believe that Cyborg should be allowed to compete in the UFC at all. If that is the only fight the UFC wants, then Germaine is willing to wait and see if the UFC will strip her belt before making her next move.

Due to remarkable changes in her physique, and the ubiquity of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport at the time, it is widely believed that Cris Cyborg used PEDs. In 2011, she was administered an anti-doping test by California State Athletic Commission for this fight with Yamanaka Hiroko.

Don’t blink.

Cyborg tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol, and was suspended for one year. That remains her sole test failure to date.

Adding potential confusion to the matter, Cyborg was recently cited for misdemeanor battery by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, after she punched strawweight Angela Magana at the UFC Athlete Retreat on Sunday, in a dispute over mean tweets.

Adding still further confusion, during the recent Ultimate Fighter 26 tryouts, UFC president Dana White said he had recently made the decision to add a women’s 125-pound division, and followed up with a line that was likely not an error.

I think there’s enough talented women to make three good divisions,” said White.

That would seem to indicate that he is dubious there are enough for four divisions at present, which would mean that the featherweight division goes on the back burner for the time being.