Strikeforce Women's Champion Cris Cyborg's Rise
Cristiane Santos Conquest of Women’s MMA Title Not Without Hardship
Combat sports such as mixed martial arts, or MMA for short, are not easy. Any champion will tell you. And if you wanted to ask a cagefighting champion just how difficult the road is, then up until recently, you would have had to ask a man. But on Saturday night, August 15, 2009, in a crazy blitz of media attention directed toward her more statuesque opponent, Cris “Cyborg” Santos became the first woman, who could honestly tell you.
It took Cris Cyborg only 4:59 to finish the heralded Gina Carano, who had risen to fame in the reboot of American Gladiators before stringing together seven impressive cagefighting wins inside the steel cage at EliteXC and Strikeforce. Carano was unbeaten when Cyborg easily dispatched her to become Strikeforce Women’s Champion in the 145-pound featherweight division.
Until that Saturday night, no one outside the world of women’s MMA and the MMA community had heard the name “Cyborg.” Carano, however, had turned quite a few heads and garnered a great deal of media attention. But after that night, Cyborg became a household name. Her quick rise to the top appeared so easy, but in reality, it has been a road not without its share of bumps and potholes.
Who Is Cris Cyborg?
Cris Cyborg was born July 9, 1985, in Curitiba. It would not be a stretch to call Curitiba the fight capital of the world. Giving birth to legends such as Anderson Silva, Wanderlei Silva, and Mauricio Shogun, ties to the MMA community run deep there. At first, Cyborg did not think about that as a path for her life. Instead, she pursued other sports. But of all the sporting events that she participated in, it would be the Handball Championships that changed her life forever.
As a high school student playing in the 2004 championships, the then Cristiane Venancio caught the attention of a former Chute Boxe coach, who encouraged her to give Muay Thai a try. She did. Under the tutelage of Master Rafael Cordeiro, she honed her skills and was soon ready for her first match.
Cris Cyborg vs. Erica Paes: Not What You Would Expect
In her first match against the more experienced Erica Paes, Cyborg’s hopes rested on her Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai training as well as her impressive physique and physicality. Paes was the smaller fighter, so it appeared that what she had in experience, she lost in size and strength. Cyborg smelled blood and stormed out after Paes with every intention of extracting it. Big mistake. It didn’t take long for the slippery Paes, taking advantage of an injury suffered by the overanxious Cyborg, to lock a knee bar on the larger opponent and submit her.
It was Cyborg’s first fight. And her first loss.
But rather than question her place in women’s MMA, Cyborg, barely having broached twenty years of age, went back to the gym and began training even harder. More fights followed. The first was a hard test for Cyborg against the vastly more experienced Vanessa Porto. Porto took Cyborg all three rounds and lost a unanimous decision to her younger opponent in an all-out war.
It was just the dose of confidence Cyborg needed. Her women’s MMA career took off with three fast and brutal knockouts, catapulting her from a 0-1 newbie to a 4-1 contender. Blossoming MMA brand EliteXC soon took notice, and before long Cyborg was blasting out another unanimous decision over Japanese star Yoko Takahashi. Then, just when she thought her career was going somewhere, women’s MMA took a huge setback with the folding of EliteXC. Luckily, Showtime was waiting in the wings with a new promotion, Strikeforce, that saw her potential and used Cyborg, as well as Gina Carano to build on a good thing, which culminated with Cyborg’s one-round TKO August 15th in the crowning of the first ever women’s MMA world champion.
Cris Cyborg overcame her greatest challenge in Carano and the hailstorm of media attention that went with that match-up. But with contenders such as Erin Toughill and Marloes Coenen waiting in the wings, her greatest challenges are yet to come.
But for the good of Cris Cyborg, and the good of ladies mixed martial arts, you can trust that as a good thing.
Cris Cyborg weighs in for women's MMA title
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