The scar that bisects Cris Cyborg’s forehead seems like a proper souvenir of her time with the UFC.

A two-inch vertical carving by featherweight Felicia Spencer this past summer at UFC 240 stands out as one of the few signs on the Brazilian’s face that a mostly dominant and violent decade atop the 145-pound division didn’t always go her way.

“I have a cut here and here,” the 34-year-old competitor pointed out last week. “Another here.”

Those you have to strain to see.

That gash?

Well, not many fighters walk away from the game unscathed.

“One time it is your turn,” Cyborg said. “It’s the fight life.”

Six months after learning what it’s like to take stitches after a bout, the raised blemish remains prominent, and the sight of it still upsets Cyborg’s mother.

Compared to many of the women the featherweight great attacked over the past 15 years, she is way ahead on the damage-delivered/damage-taken scale. Admittedly, Cyborg conceded, she has cut open many of her opponents. She broke some noses. She crushed aspirations with oppressive beatdowns. She went full Conan the Barbarian on a few of them.

As it happens, dominance can lead to arrogance, perhaps not on the part of a grounded competitor (though it can) but more in the minds of observers whose expectations lead them to believe that sustained success like Cyborg’s become facts of life.

The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, and Cris Cyborg beats down anyone she faces regardless of what time of day it is.

Death, taxes and Cyborg maulings.

You get the idea.

In 2019, however, the Brazilian legend fought for just the fifth time in 11 years without a championship belt around her waist. This after dropping the UFC title to Amanda Nunes 13 months ago when the then octagon-housed champion was assaulted in a 51-second outburst that shocked the senses and crushed her streak of 21 fights without a loss.

When Cyborg (21-2) returned to competition against Spencer — despite the deep cut and the belief that her promoter, Dana White, was out to get her — she regrouped with a unanimous-decision victory.

“After one loss it is very difficult,” Cyborg said. “You have to work really hard and put a lot of things behind you.

“Even if your boss is against you.”

The toll of the past two contests on her UFC contract yielded more damage than Cyborg’s previous 22 bouts combined, and the duration of her experience with the company, which paid her well and saw her capture and defend a UFC title, also produced the kind of pain and suffering that, in cases like cutting down to pointless catchweight fights, seemed cruel and unusual. So, you can see how that scar on her head is a symbol of turbulent times with the UFC.

Cris Cyborg left the UFC with a win over Felicia Spencer and a deep gash on her forehead. (Sergei Belski / USA Today Sports)

Salvaging the good from bad is something many of Cyborg’s challengers have had to struggle with, and over the past year it became her focus, too.

A year of change, the Brazilian MMA legend called it, culminating with her departure from the UFC after a four-year run that she regarded as a dream at the start of her career.

“I had different goals when I was younger. I wanted to be champion, champion, champion,” she said. “I still want to be champion, but I have a lot of other things behind me too.”

This is called growth. A shift in priorities.

“I know this belt is not everything in your life,” she said, “but I think it’s very good for making legacies.”

How does that feed into her expectations for 2020? “Everybody says it’s about opening eyes,” Justino noted this past week during a media day at her gym in Huntington Beach, Calif.. Closing them too, if she wanted to get cute about it. A reminder of the dominance.

Ahead of her Bellator debut on Saturday at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., where Cyborg will challenge the promotion’s 145-pound champion, Canadian Julia Budd (13-2), for what would be her record fourth major women’s title, the stakes are new and different.

For the foreseeable future, Cyborg is with Bellator, and in securing her services, the promotion agreed to a contract that company president Scott Coker called one of the most complex and significant he has been associated with. The deal, which Cyborg and her team declined to discuss in detail, pays out a compounding figure dependent upon how many fights in a row she wins, as well as if they end by submission or knockout.

“This is a big challenge and motivation for me,” Cyborg said. “I’m excited to be with a new promoter and work for Scott and win the fourth belt of my career in a different organization.”

“We knew she wanted to come here and we wanted to be fair on a comp package that worked for everybody,” Coker said.

If she goes on and establishes another unbeaten run — winning 10, 15, even 20 in a row — could Cyborg own ViacomCBS?

No, laughed Coker, but very quickly she will be in line to make seven figures.

“This could be the single biggest contract in the history of MMA if she continues to win and takes opponents out,” said the Bellator boss, who now reports to Showtime Sports President Stephen Espinoza as part of a corporate restructuring after Viacom’s merger with CBS was complete. “Her contract is incentivized unlike any fighter we have.”

Cyborg’s manager, Audie Attar of Paradigm Sports Management, proposed many of the terms that brought perhaps the greatest female fighter of all time back under Coker’s control for the first time since Strikeforce was sold to Zuffa in 2011.

The expansive and unique deal works if Cyborg wins, so in several ways it appears as if she has regained some levers of control over her career.

“I like a promoter that promotes you. You don’t have stress outside. I think it’s a good thing,” Cyborg said. “The one thing that Scott does is respect the fighters. Even if you are starting off or if you are a legend, he is going to respect you for who you are. I’m happy. I fight happy. No problems. I’m just focused on my fight. The contract is a consequence, and it really shows the value I have. This makes me happy.”

Stepping into the cage as the challenger makes for a relatively rare experience, though Cyborg said a key aspect of her success, even during her most dominant days, comes down to thinking about herself as a fighter with something to prove.

In a roundabout way, the deal also incentivizes Bellator to come up with the toughest tests they can find for Cyborg. Budd certainly measures up. As the promotion continues to build its featherweight roster, Coker expects other women to emerge who are capable of dutifully testing the Brazilian.

“If I don’t have this mindset, I have to stop fighting,” she said. “I don’t think I know everything. I think every time I step in a gym, I have something to learn. I have to be humble to learn. Not a lot of people know this.”

And then there is that reminder on her forehead, a symbol of things going bad but turning out just fine in the end.

(Top photo: Mike Roach / Zuffa)