Cris Cyborg takes on former top UFC bantamweight contender Ketlen Viera in what could well be the final fight of her career this coming Saturday, Aug. 22. In an exclusive interview with Newsweek, it was crucial to extract the most important details surrounding her thoughts on her trailblazing career, the state of MMA at present and her plans post retirement, whenever that may come. So the most important question came right out of the gate.
Despite many touting this as being Cyborg's retirement fight (she has no fights left on her current PFL deal and she has openly spoken about plans to finish her career in 2026), Cyborg stressed that the forthcoming featherweight title fight this weekend may not necessarily be her swan song. "This is my next fight — could be my last fight — but the reality is that it's my last fight in contract with the PFL," Cyborg said. "Every [one of] the last three fights I did, I was always thinking, 'Well, it can be my last fight, it can be my last fight.' I'm 41 years old, but I enjoy what I do.
I'm fighting better at 41 than when I was 21 years old. "For me, it's the honor of fighting Kevin Vieira. She's a big name in sport.
She's fought a lot of legends. She's really tough...I'm very happy to fight her. She's top 10 in her division [in the UFC].
Tough fight." When the reigning PFL champion, whose only pro defeat after debuting in 2005 came at the hands of the widely-considered GOAT Amanda Nunes, started out, there was hardly a vast infrastructure set up for women's MMA. "When I started training, there weren't a lot of girls fighting at that time," she said. "But I went to one fight in Brazil, watched live two girls fighting.
Then I said, 'Maybe I can do this.'" Instead, Cyborg drew inspiration from women competing in other fighting disciplines. Notably, former Dutch kickboxing champion and pro boxer, Lucia Rijker. "The girl I saw at the beginning of my career was Lucia Rijker," she said.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
