The UFC announced yesterday that Holly Holm would be fighting Germaine de Randamie for the inaugural UFC Women’s Featherweight Championship at UFC 208. Long-time ruler of the featherweight division Cris Cyborg was surprisingly excluded from the fight.

The main reason that has come up was Cyborg’s refusal to fight on short notice, supposedly turning down multiple offers. The UFC needed a title fight for the UFC 208 card in Brooklyn and had recently cancelled a PPV card in Anaheim due to a lack of available title fights. For Cyborg, taking a fight on 60 days notice was not enough time.

Who is right and who is wrong in this situation? Does Cyborg have a case or is the UFC reasonable in expecting a fighter to take a title fight on 60 days notice?

Although there is no guaranteed right or wrong, we can use statistics to see if fighting for a title on 60 days notice is unusual. It turns out that, yes, 60 days is on the short end of time, but it’s not unusual.

The average time that a fighter usually has to prepare for a championship fight is 89.16 days. This is based on the last 50 championship fights that were announced and fought without injury delays, short notice replacements, TUF coaches or rescheduling.

This puts Cyborg’s 60 days well below the average time to prepare for a championship. Although, when you look at recent championship fights on the right of the graph, the number doesn’t seem as unusual.

Conor McGregor and Eddie Alvarez fought at UFC 205 on 46 days notice. The two other championship fights on the card (Woodley/Thompson and Jedrzejczyk/Kowalkiewicz) were fought on 57 and 50 days notice respectively.

Based on the chart, you can see that the UFC has its ups and downs when it comes to notice before fights. It will go a couple of championship fights with plenty of notice, followed by several with shorter notice. This is most likely due to a quick demand for a title fight when all other options have been exhausted. Right now the UFC is on a very low waiting curve, and found two fighters willing to take a title fight with far less preparation time than usual.

*Correction: In an earlier version of the article, incorrect information was shown for the two championship fights scheduled for UFC 207.