Twitter Mailbag: We'd like to report a missing 'Cyborg,' please (2024)

How are you going to have a women’s featherweight title fight without the most dominant female featherweight in the world? And what should we expect from the Sage n’ Page show on FOX this Saturday night?

All that and more in this week’s Twitter Mailbag. To ask a question of your own, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

I’ve been sympathetic to the plight of one Cristiane Justino in the past, but she’s making it harder and harder. The way “Cyborg” tells it, she informed the UFC after her last fight that the cut to 140 pounds was just too brutal, and from now on she’d only fight at 145 pounds, and only with 12 weeks’ notice. So then the UFC created a 145-pound title and gave her 10 weeks’ notice to fight for it, and she turned that down.

Obviously, if Justino doesn’t feel healthy enough to fight, whether physically or mentally, then she shouldn’t force herself. But if you need a minimum of 12 weeks just to safely make weight, you need to reevaluate some of your choices.

And if the real issue is not weight, but rather her physical and mental state (Justino said she’s dealing with “severe depression,” which is no joke), then I’m not sure how an extra two weeks would solve all those problems.

I still feel for her, being left out of the picture like this, at least in part because she couldn’t or wouldn’t accommodate the UFC’s schedule. At the same time, when people are trying this hard to give you everything you asked for, you might consider making it a little easier on them.

It is pretty brilliant matchmaking, from that perspective. We’ve long gotten the sense that the UFC would prefer to see Sage Northcutt and Paige VanZant win, preferably at the same time so that we come to think of them as a sort of mixed doubles team. Whether intentionally or not, the UFC has put them forth as a package deal, as if they were created in the same lab as an answer to the question, “How do we appeal to the segment of the population that’s put off by fighters with attitudes and tattoos and scars and personality?”

They’ve both suffered losses and had their shortcomings exposed, but they’re also both still headlining a UFC on FOX event. Think of it as the UFC’s way of telling us that it’s made its mind up about these two. At least this time, the company chose worthy opposition that it can also do some work with.

Michele Waterson hits a lot of the same notes for the UFC as VanZant does, only with more experience and a better backstory. And you put Mickey Gall opposite Northcutt, it looks like an “Outsiders” reboot for the modern age. All he needs is to come out with a switchblade and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve, while Northcutt removes his letterman sweater in the Harley-Davidson prep(py) point.

These are also two interesting match-ups, mostly due to the unknowns. Will Gall still look good against an actual MMA fighter? Is Northcutt’s ground game still a huge liability? How much rust will Waterson have to knock off after more than a year away? Is it a coincidence that “Dancing With The Stars” rhymes with defeat via armbar?

There are questions, is what I’m saying. I look forward to an only partially tongue-in-cheek appreciation of the answers.

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It might be harder to justify, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t happen. Conor McGregor “relinquished” the UFC featherweight title after holding it for nearly a year without so much as seriously discussing the prospect of a defense. He’s only held the UFC lightweight for a little over a month. Even if he’s away for the entirety of a normal human gestation period, that wouldn’t be so unprecedented among UFC champs.

Still, if he pushes his vacation too far, and if the UFC finds itself in need of a quick fix for a lackluster pay-per-view lineup, it’s not hard to imagine someone pulling a hunk of leather and gold out of the closet and letting a couple contenders scrap for it. It’s also not hard to imagine McGregor being thoroughly unamused.

All three of them have a chance, in different ways and for different reasons. Dominick Cruz could certainly beat some featherweights, though maybe not all of them. And if the right person ends up with the UFC women’s featherweight strap, don’t be surprised to see Ronda Rousey get a quick shot at that.

But if you’re asking who stands the best chance of legitimately dominating two divisions, it’s got to be Jon Jones. You look at some recent UFC heavyweight champs and you see that Jones is actually as big or bigger than plenty of them, so size wouldn’t be a huge issue. Plus, he might just be the best mixed martial artist on the planet. So that helps.

I wonder, though, does the McGregor situation make the who two-division champ thing seem less appealing to other fighters? For one thing, you’d no longer be making history. For another, you know the UFC isn’t going to let you keep both belts. Unless there’s a big financial upside, why take the risk of going up a weight?

It’s very possible I’m influenced by my own answer to the previous question, but I’d make Jones vs. Stipe Miocic without even having to think about it. Then I’d wave that wand again and go back in time to book Randy Couture vs. Fedor Emelianenko in 2007.

It’s pretty quiet now, but I suspect the fans in Sacramento will let Urijah Faber know how much they’re going to miss him once fight night rolls around. He’s been a great ambassador for that city and for the lighter weight divisions. Every UFC fighter under 155 pounds owes him a debt of gratitude.

Is it strange for Faber’s exit to get third billing behind the UFC’s wonder twins, Sage and Paige, and in Faber’s own hometown? A little, yeah. But the UFC is in the business of selling the present and the future more than the past. Faber will get his love on the broadcast, but then he’s gone. It’s the young guns who are going to sell tomorrow’s tickets and pay-per-views.

You’ve got to cut the UFC some slack at heavyweight. There are only so many name-brand fighters, and they can’t all fight the few up-and-comers like Derrick Lewis and Francis Ngannou. Some rematches are bound to happen up there, and some of them are going to be ones we’ve been asking for since never.

Maybe we should see it more as a chance to test out our theories about heavyweight. Is it really just a glorified coin flip when the big men throw leather? Run this knockout fodder back enough times, we may get an answer (and/or a lot of concussions).

I’d take any of them at this point, but if I had to pick one? McGregor vs. Max Holloway, for sure. Holloway is still so young, and he’s come a long way since that first fight with McGregor. I’d love to see him get another chance somewhere down the line, especially now that he’s got more experience and more seasoning. Realistically, though, I’ll be mildly amazed if McGregor fights at 145 pounds ever again.

It depends on what the big stars do (or don’t). Those of us inside the MMA bubble might complain about which lightweight contender gets which fight on which pay-per-view, but it doesn’t change the big financial picture for the UFC. It needs McGregor and Rousey to get out there and get that money. If they both spend the first half of 2017 at home, it’s hard to see anyone else on the roster making up the difference in pay-per-view buys.

Are you kidding? It seems barely capable of inspiring Kelvin Gastelum to stop cutting weight, even though he’s almost as bad at making welterweight as he is good at fighting as a middleweight. Maybe the solution is continuing to give people fights they can’t resist at weight classes they should really call home. Seems to be working for now.

Oh, you mean the guy leaving us to go write about wrestling, and the kind that’s done in costumes and tights rather than in singlets? Clearly he’s the biggest snake in the grass since T.J. Dillashaw.

But, honestly, if I had a pro wrestling website and needed a person to run it, I’d hope to score someone as professional and capable and enthusiastic as Brent Brookhouse. Here’s to you, you big mark.

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Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.