What's next for 'Cyborg' in the UFC?

For one night, at least, Cris “Cyborg” Justino played the role of the superstar she always knew she could be, if only she was given the chance.

The San Diego resident returned to her hometown of Curitiba, Brazil, and got a hero’s welcome from an estimated crowd of 45,000 at Arena da Baixada on Saturday night at UFC 198. The current Invicta featherweight champion then electrified the third-largest crowd in UFC history by waxing an overmatched Leslie Smith in just 1:21 in a catchweight 140-pound bout, winning via TKO for her 14th career finish.

Smith (8-7-1), a gamer who trains at the vaunted Cesar Gracie gym in Northern California, vigorously protested the stoppage, and she probably had a point, as it appeared the referee had stepped in early. But it also appeared he stopped a slaughter in the making, and her protests went nowhere as Justino basked in the adoration of the crowd.

"I believe that it was my moment, tonight was my moment and it was historic," Justino (16-1, 1 no-contest) said at the post-fight news conference. "I never thought I'd be sitting here tonight. So take a lot of pictures. I never thought I'd be here after everything that I went through. It was a historic moment for me.”

So the question, as it always seems to be after Cyborg fights, is where does she go from here? Justino is indisputably the best featherweight fighter in the history of women’s MMA, having held the Strikeforce belt for years before winning the Invicta title.

She also happens to walk around between fights at approximately 170 pounds, and her entry into the UFC has been long postponed because former bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey wouldn’t budge from insisting at holding a potential superfight at 135 pounds.

The UFC finally bent on the notion of letting Justino fight at 140 pounds, and she looked emaciated during her weight cut, but still managed to check in at 139 pounds for Friday’s weigh-ins.

Curiously, having delivered a money performance at UFC 198 and demonstrating what she can do on a big platform, Justino did not call out Rousey, or any of the other UFC’s star bantamweights, after her win. Instead, she insisted the door will stay open to superfights, while saying she wants to focus on defending her Invicta crown.

"I've been training for two years to be able to make weight yesterday, and I felt very well tonight," Justino said. "And I believe I can do other superfights. But I'm going to continue in my weight class. I've been champion for some time, and I want female MMA to grow, and I don't think it's the right thing for me to abandon my weight class.”

And therein lies the rub. The UFC has two women’s divisions, the marquee bantamweight crew and the 115-pound strawweight class. It also seems to be flirting with the idea of adding flyweight, with a bout between Joanne Calderwood and Valerie Letourneau signed at 125 pounds for June 18 in Ottawa.

But there just isn’t enough elite talent to fill out a 145-pound division. The only other real name of note at 145 is current Bellator competitor Marloes Coenen, a former Strikeforce bantamweight champion whom Justino has already TKO’ed twice. Aside from Coenen, Justino’s victories in Invicta have included the likes of Fiona Muxlow, Charmaine Tweet, Faith Van Duin, and Daria Ibragimova, names known to only the most diehard women’s MMA fans.

Of course, it’s also not as if the biggest names have been going out of their way to fight Justino, either. Rousey always used Justino’s PED suspension following a 2011 fight in California as her reason to refuse a fight with Justino. UFC 198, though, was her sixth fight since being reinstated, and she’s passed every drug test she’s taken in that time.

Current UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate, meanwhile, had previously expressed a willingness to fight Justino at 140 pounds, as has former champion Holly Holm.

Now that Tate is in Rousey’s former position as champion, though, she seems more interested in having Justino drop down to 135 than before:

In fairness, when Tate was later called out by a fan for her previous stance on 140, she said she’d still be willing to do it:

By Sunday afternoon, it appeared Justino had realized she may have let a golden opportunity to hype a major fight slip by on Saturday night, as she posted a crudely done photoshop to her Facebook page attempting to get Rousey to fight at UFC 205:

For now, though, it appears it will be awhile before any Justino superfight happens. Rousey has made it abundantly clear she’d rather do anything else but face Cyborg’s challenge, and both Tate and Holm have summer fights lined up. In the meantime, Justino will keep doing her thing.

"I like to go for the knockout,” Justino said. “If you watch my fights that's what I like to do. I have good wrestling, jiu-jitsu. I've been doing judo for the past year to fight with someone. But I've been waiting for the opportunity. That's it. I'm prepared.”

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