Giving black eyes is nothing new to the Cristiane Santos, better known by her moniker “Cyborg” but usually she gives the black eyes in a cage or a gym but today she gave one to women’s mixed martial arts on the whole.
The Strikeforce women’s featherweight champion is widely regarded to be one of the best females in the sport. Santos has been unbeaten since her first professional bout in 2005 dispatching of the likes of Shayna Baszler, Hitomi Akano, Marloes Coenen and Gina Carano.
Last month following almost eighteen months away from the cage she returned to defend her title blowing the doors off the well-rounded Hiroko Yamanaka in her first defeat since 2008.
Today all that was turned upside down when word broke that the California State Athletic Commission has suspended the license of Cyborg and has slapped a $2,500 fine on her for testing positive for the banned substance stanozolol metabolites.
So what does this mean for Santos and the Strikeforce 145-pound division? There won’t be either in the near future.
Strikeforce initially added a featherweight division for their female athletes because they had a beautiful, marketable Gina Carano who was unable to make the drop down to 135-pounds so this weight class was garnered directly for her.
It was soon taken over by Cyborg though who, in the biggest fight in women’s MMA to this point put a real beat-down on the Muay-Thai striker who hasn’t been seen inside a combat circle since, instead pursuing a career in Hollywood.
It’s been a rollercoaster effect since that point; the featherweight division has struggled to find worthy challengers for their champion hence why they had to go to Japan to find “Cats Eye” Yamanaka.
UFC President Dana White isn’t known for pulling punches and has been open about his opinions on women’s combat sports stating that there is a lack of depth amongst divisions and there will not be women competing in the UFC.
With this news breaking I would suspect that the brash figurehead of Zuffa LLC will be quick to terminate the consensus pound-for-pound queen of the sport.
If Santos is removed from the featherweight division it leaves it without a real meaning, although there are quite a number of talented 145-pounders out there most of them aren’t known by the general public and whether or not they want to start from scratch and re-build a division now is highly questionable.
I would suspect that the 145-pounders on the Strikeforce roster would be forced to slim down to make bantamweight or seek employment elsewhere.
The women’s bantamweight division is currently a key talking point amongst fight fans following the triangle twitter fiasco between Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate and Sarah Kaufman so hopefully that momentum can bring these ladies to a new level of success.
So Cyborg, I guess you have twelve months free to make it down to 135-pounds.
She should never be allowed to fight again. This should apply to any fighter’s failed drug test in men’s and women’s mma.
no kidding never a question that she was no gear from the start. Let her try and fight clean then will see what she is made off
ANYONE caught cheating should be banned! No exceptions!