"Poor girl still suffering from CTE" - Cris Cyborg mocks Ronda Rousey over "greatest fighter" claim
Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg still have no love lost between them.
The former UFC and WWE champion has been doing a lot of media lately highlighting her previously undiscussed and troublesome history with concussions over many years. During one such interview, Rousey made a fairly hyperbolic claim that caught the attention of many including the aforementioned Cyborg.
The former UFC featherweight champion quote tweeted a clip of Rousey making some of these outlandish comments in a recent interview. The comments in question came from footage shared to X by @jedigoodman saw Ronda Rousey address her UFC 193 title defeat to Holly Holm where she stated:
"My mouth guard was bad. I literally came into that fight concussed from slipping down some stairs already after all of these years of concussions. Then I had an absolutely terrible weight cut which; that means you have less fluid in your brain to protect it. I was out on my feet for the entire fight. I was just trying to make it look like I wasn't hurt."
"But I just wasn't there cognitively. I couldn't think as fast. I couldn't judge distance and just from that one fight everybody felt like oh, she's a fraud. I know that, like, I'm the greatest fighter that has ever lived... But when it got to a point where I had just taken so much neurological damage that I couldn't take it anymore, suddenly everything that I accomplished meant nothing."
In the quote tweet commenting on that Rousey video, Cris Cyborg said:
"Poor girl still suffering from CTE. I hope she finally got a good mouth guard."
Check out Cris Cyborg commenting on Ronda Rousey's claims of untouched greatness below
Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg's long-standing feud
The 37-year-old has had a beef with Cyborg dating back to their days of both being titleholders in Strikeforce. Rousey was the bantamweight champion while Cyborg held the featherweight belt. This created a lot of hang-ups over the years as 'Rowdy' wanted the bout at 135 pounds only while Cyborg has long stated she cannot physically cut down to the bantamweight limit.
The California native eventually moved to the UFC in early 2013 after Rousey and Cyborg discussed a fight publically that never came to fruition under that Strikeforce banner. Ronda Rousey immediately asserted herself as UFC bantamweight champion thereafter while Cyborg became Invicta FC featherweight champion.
Rousey and Cyborg got more bitter with their trash talk as time went on with the former accusing the latter of steroid use, the latter threatening legal action from that, and the mean-spiritedness kept ramping up.
Cyborg eventually got to the UFC but after logging a pair of octagon wins, Ronda Rousey retired from the sport and Cris Cyborg went on to become the UFC featherweight champion. This remains one of the great "what if" contests in MMA history and many wondered what would transpired if it had ever come to fruition.