Cris Cyborg names toughest opponent in her career

When I fought Erica Paes I was too new to be worried about her as an opponent.  She was a BJJ Black Belt and I had 6 months of Chute Boxe training.  I did not have any pressure of being famous and at the time I wasn’t competing for money, I was competing to test myself.

My loss to Amanda Nunes was the opposite.  I had been undefeated for 14 years and was the Co main event on the biggest PPV of the year for the UFC.  While I think many athletes would feel additional stress being in that type of situation, that is the type of pressure which brings the best results out of myself.  With 16 World Championship title wins I have become very comfortable with those feelings of anxiety and nervousness and have grown to appreciate those emotions as a sign that I am prepared to perform my best.

Often credited as becoming the first World Champion in Women’s MMA that distinction should be given to Marloes Coenen who 9 years earlier won an open weight single night Grand Prix defeating 3 women in the same night to become the sports first Female World Champion.I became the first female ‘Featherweight’ world champion of the sport in 2009 when I defeated Gina Carano in Strikeforce.  While Gina Carano was undefeated, neither of us had won a championship belt in the sport of MMA.

In her first fight Marloes flying armbarred the undefeated heavyweight Becki Levi who was a training partner of Dan Severn and some of the top wrestlers in the world.  Levi out weighed Marloes by nearly 40 pounds fight night! Coenen went on to defeat Mika Harigai and then fought Japanese legend Megumi Yabushita in the finals.  Yabushita had just defeated the 330 pound Russian Judo Champion Svetlana Goundarenko. Marloes would go on to win 3 rounds of 5 minutes to become he ReMIX World Cup Champion and the first Female to be recognized as World Champion following the Grand Prix tournament.

When I defended my Strikeforce Championship Belt against Marloes Coenen in 2010, that was the first time I fought another female who had been a World Champion.  That was the first time I was fighting someone else who knew what it was like to be World Champion, and who knew what the pressures of a World Title fight bring.  When you are fighting for a World Championship there is always extra photos, extra interviews, extra autographs and for the first time in my career I was fighting someone else who had proven that she too was a person who had ‘grown to appreciate performing with the additional stress of being a World Champion’–just like myself.  Marloes trained with one of the top MMA academies in Europe and was known for her wrestling and submission skills, something early in my career I was lacking.

When fight night finally arrived, Marloes proved to be every bit the Champion I thought she was.  Prior to her my opponents all felt my power and I was able to instantly take control of the match.  With Marloes she used her experience to stay in the fight and continued applying pressure.  Eventually I was able to get a dominant position and the ref  stopped the fight at 3:40 of the third round which was the longest fight I had ever had in the USA at the time.

Marloes and I fought twice, with the second match taking place for the Invicta FC belt 3 years later, in 2013.  The second time we fought I knew that I was going to be in for a war fight night.  This time the fight went into the final minute of the 4th round and she proved to be even more tough than our first fight.  It wasn’t until December of 2017 when I faced another Combat Sports World Champion in Holly Holm that an opponent had a longer fight time than my rematch with Marloes.

When people ask me who my toughest opponent was, I almost always think of Marloes Coenen.  She was a pioneer before I was in the sport.  She was a world champion with experience in Wrestling and Grappling and had faced the top talent of her era with international fights in Japan where MMA was the biggest and most popular.  These two fights taught me a lot about myself, gave me confidence to know I was capable of continued success, and helped me grow with experiences needed to make me the fighter I am today.  While every opponent is tough, every fight camp is challenging, and every competition is a learning experience, I look back on my two fights with Marloes and the half hour of fighting we shared inside the cage during our two fights and I know that those experiences helped build me into the dominant champion I eventually became.

I want to thank Marloes Coenen for the amazing opportunity to visit her and her family during my most recent trip to Amsterdam.  Follow all the adventures on my exclusive OnlyFans video blogs