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145 pound women’s champion Cris Cyborg is returning to the UFC for her second catchweight fight with the promotion. But unfortunately, the fight will not be the much anticipated faceoff between her and former 135 pound champion Ronda Rousey. Instead, Cyborg will face off against Swedish UFC newcomer Lina Lansberg at a Brazilian UFC Fight Night event in September.

This follows weeks of Cyborg taunting Rousey, challenging her to return and fight on the UFC 205 card at Madison Square Garden. Most recently, Cyborg made fun of a recent paparazzi photo of Rousey on the street and questioned whether Ronda was pregnant. The smacktalk doesn’t seem to have Rousey any closer to returning, and UFC president Dana White says he’s hopeful Ronda will fight again in early 2017. She isn’t pregnant though, he added.

Cyborg isn’t just fighting on the UFC Fight Night card, she’s actually headlining it. Her previous UFC appearance was in the middle of a packed UFC 198 pay-per-view event that drew over 45,000 to Arena da Baixada in Brazil. The UFC may be placing her at the top of a smaller regional card now to see how well she draws on her own. It’s also a sign that Cyborg is a UFC regular now. In the past, it was unclear whether or not she would appear regularly in the promotion since they don’t have a 145 pound division. But with two fights in four months, it seems like the promotion has gotten over their hesitance to use the heavy handed Brazilian slugger.





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Unfortunately, they still seem to be having trouble finding decent opponents for Cyborg. Leslie Smith was 2-2 in the UFC at 135 pounds before moving up to face Cyborg, where she got dispatched in just over a minute. And now the UFC has Cris fighting an unknown European with a 6-1 minor league record. It’s a fight that would have trouble getting approved by an American athletic commission, but Cyborg is used to getting an odds and ends assortment of opponents. The 145 pound women’s division is awfully shallow, and that means you often fight whatever 135 pounder is willing to put on the weight.

A lot of women in the UFC’s bantamweight division have told the press they’d fight Cyborg. Miesha Tate, Cat Zingano, and Holly Holm come to mind. Yet here we are none the less with another fight for Cyborg where the opponent is underwhelming. It’s a shame that possibly the best pound for pound female fighter in the world is stuck fighting unranked opponents, especially now that she’s finally in the UFC. Hopefully things will change in the future … until then, we’ll have to watch in fascinated horror as Cyborg continues to pummel smaller and less experienced fighters into oblivion.

(via MMA Fighting)