Dana White Wants You To Know Cris Cyborg Doesn't Want To Fight Amanda Nunes
How many times has Dana White said that Cris Cyborg is afraid of Amanda Nunes or that she doesn't want to fight Nunes? Well, you can count 'em.
After her December loss to Amanda Nunes, Cris Cyborg said she wanted to run the fight back.
"I can rematch any time (UFC president) Dana White wants to put it together," Cyborg said after losing the UFC women's featherweight title at UFC 232. "I love fighting and this has put more fire in my heart to continue fighting."
Nunes dethroned Cyborg via knockout. The bout lasted a brief but violent 51 seconds.
Nunes and White were not on as enthusiastic about the rematch at the time.
In June, the narrative shifted. Nunes and White seemed to get on board with a rematch.
"She wants to fight Cyborg again," White said of Nunes after UFC 238. "I don't think Cyborg wants to fight her again."
The statement was odd since Cyborg never publicly stated that she had changed her stance on a second fight with Nunes.
Things heated up in July and the narrative took another turn.
"(Nunes) wants the Cyborg rematch," White said after UFC 239. "We're down to make the Cyborg rematch. Cyborg always thinks that I'm being whatever to her or whatever. I'm not. I don't blame Cyborg for not wanting this fight. I don't blame her. I'm not trying to say anything about her. If she doesn't want it, that's fine. There's always somebody else. (Nunes) has got both belts and she's willing to defend them both. And she's healthy."
White also spoke to the UFC after UFC 239 and just in case some folks watched the official UFC post-fight video and not the post-fight press conference, the UFC boss made sure to hit his talking points there as well.
"I'm not shitting on Cyborg," said White. "But I don't blame Cyborg for not wanting that fight. But we'll try and get it done."
As far as I can tell, the post-UFC 239 incidents were the first times White proclaimed that Cyborg did not want to fight Nunes. White must have liked how the claim sounded and how it painted Cyborg in a yellow light because he's hammered that point home a lot since that event.
It might have been a coincidence (it wasn't), but White ramped up his rhetoric as the final fight on Cyborg's UFC contract neared.
"She's mad at me again for some reason,” said White. “Listen, I'm not saying anything negative about Cyborg. She does not want to fight Amanda Nunes. That is a fact. Why she would be mad at me because she doesn't want to fight Amanda Nunes is beyond me. I have no problem with Cris. I said many times earlier when she first came in there were obviously some things we had to squash and fix, and I thought we had done that. I've had a decent working relationship with her. Believe me, I've had much worse.
"I have no ill will toward her, and when I say she doesn't want to fight Amanda, and I say that I don't blame her, I'm not talking about her or being negative toward her. These are facts. Amanda Nunes wants to fight Cyborg. We want to make an Amanda Nunes vs. Cyborg fight. Cyborg does not. That's a fact."
White then said he was willing to give Cyborg a (not really) one-fight deal for her to face Nunes.
"Sure (I would do a one-fight deal)," White said. "She doesn't want to fight Amanda Nunes. Period. End of story. She wouldn't be a free agent. She'd have the belt and there's a clause that goes along with the belt. So it wouldn't really be a (one-fight deal), yeah."
Cyborg defeated Felicia Spencer at UFC 240 to finish out her UFC contract.
On August 2, White sat down in his office and released an A-plus slice of propaganda that seemed, let's say produced, to paint Cyborg in the worst possible light as she headed into free agency.
White started the interview going over a detailed history of his relationship with Cyborg. More than three minutes into the interview White took his first shot at Cyborg when he said the issues she was bringing up from the past (alleged bullying by White and Joe Rogan), we're "an absolute smokescreen to not fight Amanda Nunes."
After showing a clip where Cyborg called White a liar and said that his actions we're damaging to her brand, the video cut back to White who said, "All this other bullshit that she's putting out there, again, to avoid fighting Amanda Nunes."
"Message received. I get it. I'm going to release her from her contract. I will not match any offers. She is free and clear to go Bellator or any of these other organizations and fight these easy fights that she wants. Done. Done deal. I will, literally today, have my lawyer draft a letter to her team that she is free and clear to go wherever she wants. We're out of the Cyborg business."
No one has commented on whether or not if that letter was "literally" drafted that day or delivered to Cyborg or her team.
White continued to stress his take on the subject, "This is a woman who doesn't want to fight the champion. No matter what she says."
That woman is the one who showed up to a post-fight interview at UFC 240 wearing a shirt that advertised the possible rematch.
"If you don't want to fight Amanda and you don't want to be here that bad, then what would I want you here?" White added.
Despite White's claims that the UFC is out of the Cyborg business, he still took the opportunity to remind the media that was present at the most recent Dana White's Contender Series card to once again sound off on the (maybe) ex-UFC fighter.
"She was a nightmare to deal with," said White. "And at the end of the day she knows, I know, Amanda Nunes knows, I tried to make that Nunes fight. She doesn't want it. She doesn't want it. She gets mad when I say I don't blame her. I don't blame her. If that was Amanda Nunes (at UFC 240) I think everyone can agree what would've happened in that fight. She's unhappy, we're unhappy, she lies and does that thing. See ya later. Have a nice life."
Cyborg did release a doctored video that made it seem like White said something he didn't say via misleading subtitles. Yes, that was a shitty and unnecessary thing to do. Cyborg did apologize to White for the video, pointing out that it was her production team that had put the video together.
The video had White fired up.
"She doesn't want to fight Amanda Nunes," White said. "You guys, the fans, need to get it into your head that she did everything she could, including doctoring a video, lying about what I said, to avoid fighting Amanda Nunes. The fans and the media just need to get it through your heads that all that shit that was going on, 'He's bullying me.' Bullying you? You've been here for five years. What are you talking about? You're talking about stuff that happened five years ago. That was five years ago. It's all a smokescreen to not fight Amanda Nunes. She doesn't want that fight. Otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now. I've had problems over the last 20 years with plenty of fighters. From Tito Ortiz to Mark Hunt to God knows who else. I can't even think off the top of my head. We always made fights. She doesn't want to fight Amanda Nunes."
"She (Cyborg) had the opportunity for her legacy, Cyborg's legacy, to get that fight again," White continued. "She doesn't want it."
White was then asked, looking back at how things turned out, if he would have done anything differently in regard to Cyborg."
"No, I wouldn't do anything different," White said. "The one thing I'm glad I did was I pushed her to make sure she fought Amanda Nunes, because she didn't want that fight the first time, let alone the second time. She wanted Cindy Dandois or Pam Sorensen. Those are the fights she wanted, and she was turning down Amanda Nunes. I said, 'That's not going to happen.' So we kept pushing and pushing and pushing and finally we got her to take the Amanda Nunes fight. I'm happy I did that. Other than that, I wouldn't change one thing in the last five years on Cyborg."
When a media member asked White if he had offered the fight to Cyborg, the exasperated UFC president replied, "You reporters and fans need to get it through your heads, I tried to make this fight. She does not want this fight. She doesn't want this fight. Doesn't want it. If I'm lying, she can call tomorrow and we will make that fight. She will not call tomorrow because she does not want to fight Amanda Nunes."
When asked if he would do a one-fight deal, White stayed on topic.
"She won't do a one-fight deal. She will not fight Amanda Nunes," White said. "She will not fight Amanda Nunes. On a half a fight deal. She will not fight Amanda Nunes on a one-fight, 10-fight, half a fight deal. She does not want to fight Amanda Nunes.
"Amanda Nunes will knock her out again in the first round. I know it, you know it and she knows it. She will not do that fight. Period. End of story.”
In the final question of the nearly nine-minute conversation with White, he was asked why he thought Cyborg would never take the Nunes fight.
After all the times White said that Cyborg was afraid, he replied, "I don't think she's afraid to fight Amanda Nunes. She doesn't want to lose again. There's a difference between being afraid to fight somebody… I'm not saying she's afraid to fight Amanda Nunes, being afraid to fight and knowing that you're going to lose are two different things."
It was a strange way to end things after how many times White claimed that Cyborg was afraid to fight Nunes.
It’s hard to tell if all of this is just posturing on both sides, but the relationship between these two is not a good one — to put it lightly.
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Music Time:
Shellac: Elephant
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Lyrics Time:
Here are the lyrics to the above song. I think the song fits pretty well with how White has been dealing with Cyborg:
Here
Comes
Here comes the argument
Silent rage is no defense
Against a senseless argument
All this progress with thought
It's not to activate
Know what to say and do
This will confront you
Fact of the manner is
Facts don't matter
Anti-intellectual
The new virtue
Repeat a lie
That makes it true
Repeat a lie
That makes it true
Repeat the lie
If you say elephant
Already failed test
If you say elephant
Already failed
Repeat a lie
Repeat a lie
Repeat a lie
Repeat the lie
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Movie Time:
If you’re familiar with MMA memes, you’ll get this one: