Dana White said the UFC is "out of the (Cris) Cyborg (Justino) business.”
Days after Cyborg went on ESPN's Ariel Helwani's MMA Show and called for an apology from the UFC president after alleged bullying over the years, White said he would be releasing the 145-pound fighter from her contract.
"All this other (expletive) that she's putting out there - again, to avoid fighting Amanda Nunes. Message received." White said, via the UFC's Youtube page Saturday. "I get it. I'm going to release her from her contract. I will not match any offers."
There are a lot of layers to this situation which goes back far before Cyborg was even in the UFC. While she was the champion of Invicta FC, there were discussions of a matchup between her and the then-UFC 135-pound champion Ronda Rousey.
At that time Rousey accused Cyborg of using steroids and soon after White alleged the same thing when joking with the media in at the MMA Awards.
White addressed those comments Friday as well.
"They were asking me about Cyborg and I said to the media, 'Guys did you see her at the MMA Awards? Did you not think she was on steroids?' She got up to get her award and she walks up the stairs and I was saying that she looked like Wanderlei Silva in a dress. What I meant was, she had the same physique as Wanderlei Silva. Then one month later, Wanderlei Silva evades a drug test and gets a three-year suspension from the sport.
"First of all, I never came out and bullied and said anything about Cyborg. I was asked a question about the media. So now for hacks to throw up a 15-second clip of me saying that, it's completely taken out of context. We talked about this - Cyborg and I - before she came into the UFC…. It is an absolute smoke screen to not face Amanda Nunes."
Cyborg has never publicly said she does not want a rematch with Nunes, who handed Cyborg just the second loss of her career by a first-round knockout at UFC 232. She even said she wore a "Nunes vs. Cyborg 2" shirt to UFC 240, but told the ESPN podcast the organisation made her take it off.
This is just the first in a line of issues Cyborg alleges to have faced from White and even UFC colour commentator Joe Rogan, who joked on a podcast in 2015 that Cyborg had male genitalia.
She has asked for a public apology and said Rogan has told her sorry before but never issued a public statement.
"You want to talk about me, if I have a d-, you talk in public," Cyborg said. "If you want to say sorry, you talk in public. ... For me, you're not a man. If Joe Rogan was a man, he'd go say sorry in public like what he said. Don't come behind in the room and talk to me in my ear. This is no type of man I know."
She continued: "I'm suffering bullying. Where is the code that you don't do this? He is the boss. How does the boss make fun of your athlete? It's a girl, say she has a penis, she's a guy. You have to have rules. This is not right. I have a daughter, I have a mom, I have a dad. My daughter had a problem in school already because of this."
But after all of this back and forth only one thing is clear: White doesn't want to deal with it anymore and said he is happy to let Cyborg go and explore other opportunities without a fight from the UFC.
"She is free and clear to go to Bellator or any of these other organizations and fight these easy fights that she wants," White said. "Done. Done deal. I will literally today have my lawyer draft a letter to her team that she is free and clear to go where ever she wants. We're out of the Cyborg business."
