Cris Cyborg still has over 20lbs to lose before UFC fight this weekend

As the long-reigning undisputed queen of the women’s 145lb division, Cris Cyborg had been plagued for quite some time with difficulty making weight for her fights. She enlisted the help of fight prep guru George Lockhart, and had success in making the weight safely at 145 and put on consistently brutal performances in the process for the last two years or so.

Yet since she’s now fighting in the UFC at 140lb catchweights, those last five pounds have proven to be a much more difficult process for her to go through. We’ve seen a snippet of what that entails for her in her new foray in an unofficial weight class, and it certainly looks excruciating. Now, in a new interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Justino revealed that despite having less than a week to make weight, she still has over 20 pounds to lose before stepping on the scale this Friday.

(Interview begins around 32:00 mark, cued at beginning of interview)

“In this camp, my nutrition coach, he starts giving to me birth control, and I never take this in my life, and I take this three months, every day. My coach says it will be good for me, I believe in him, and, man I fly from America to Brazil 168 pounds. My body will hold more water than normal, and I don’t think this will really help my body.”

When asked about how things were going Monday, Cyborg noted she was unable to break past what she might have been expecting.

“I fly from America to Brazil [five days ago] 168 pounds, today I wake up 165.”

How exactly this is going to work out is obviously still to be seen, but we can expect for there to be much scrutiny on what she looks like during the week in the lead up to the weigh-ins and eventually on the scale. After that, it’s a matter of finding out how she looks in the cage afterwards.

UFC Fight Night 95 takes place this Saturday, live from Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. The card will be headlined by Cris Cyborg against Lina Lansberg, making her UFC debut. The card will be televised on Fox Sports 1.

Cyborg also took to social media on Monday, posting a video on her Instagram Stories showing her weighing 163.8 lbs.