With UFC contract nearing completion, Cris Cyborg has secured a boxing license

UFC women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg is now a licensed boxer in the state of California. The Brazilian juggernaut received her license on Wednesday, per a report from Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com.

The timing of Cyborg’s being granted a boxing license is quite convenient, as her current UFC contract will wrap up in October. Because she’s a UFC champion, however, the UFC will have an exclusive one-year window to negotiate a new contract with her. If the two parties don’t agree to a new deal Cyborg should, in theory, be allowed to go full-steam ahead on her long-discussed boxing career.

That said, we know that Cyborg is hoping to defend her new UFC women’s featherweight title against Holly Holm in the near future.

“She’s already run three times,” Cyborg said of her attempts to lock down a fight with Holm. “I was supposed to fight her in Curitiba, I agreed to fight her 140 and she did not want to fight. Then, I said fight in Brazil, and she said she’d fight me at 138, not 140. And after this fight, when Megan Anderson pulled out of the fight, I said I’d like to fight Holly, she said no. […] Three time she run from this fight.”

Holm, meanwhile, has said this a fight she’d be up for – for the right price.

“This is me publicly saying, ‘Yes, I am open to the fight at 145 [pounds],’” Holm said. “[But] I’m not going to take a fight at 135 pounds one month, and then the next month it’s, ‘Oh hey, do you want to fight Cyborg at 145?’ This is me going outside of my weight class and that’s OK. I’m willing to take the fight. I just want to have a full training camp. My contract is at 135 pounds. So, if they came with a fight like that [at 145lbs], I would say, ‘Let’s negotiate.’ I truly feel that is one of, if not the biggest, female fights they can promote. I’m not in it for the priority of money, but I value myself. […] This is a huge fight and I’m sure everybody around it, the promotion, is going to make money. So, I would expect more money.”

Do you think Cris Cyborg should pursue a boxing career, or would she be wise to stick to MMA?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 9/7/2017.