Can Cris Cyborg make the 135-pound weight limit? Despite a dominant performance against Leslie Smith at UFC 198, where Cyborg weighed-in as low as 139 lbs for their catchweight bout, her nutritionist George Lockhart isn’t sure she could still perform well at bantamweight.
“Could she make the cut? Absolutely,” Lockhart explained on The Luke Thomas Show (Transcription via MMA Fighting). “She can make 135. She can make 130, but performing? That’s another question. That right there comes down to time. She put in a lot of time for this.”
“People don’t realize how hard it was just to get down to 139. She had to do three-a-days every single day of the week. Sundays she had a day off, but still. Three-a-days, it’s a lot. She’s running, doing a lot of road work.”
Since Ronda Rousey’s meteoric rise to superstardom in the UFC began in 2013, a super-fight between the two most dominant women in MMA history was talked about over and over again. The lone obstacle: Cyborg’s weight. The Brazilian wrecking machine holds the 145-pound title at Invicta and for a long time has denied that she could ever make 135. But since she made 139 last weekend and all the big fights are waiting at bantamweight, you should never say never.
“If she ever said, ‘You know what? I want to come down to the 135.’ I think it’d be possible,” Lockhart said. “But is it definite? Honestly, I don’t know.”