Cris Cyborg has held up a mirror to Ronda Rousey after she called out UFC fans for their treatment of her and other MMA legends.

Rousey, 38, blazed the trail for women’s MMA in the mainstream during the early 2010s, becoming a household name after going on a supremely dominant run as the UFC’s first-ever bantamweight champion.

But after having the holes in her game exposed in dramatic back-to-back losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes, she stepped away from the cage never to return, witnessing firsthand how quickly public perception can flip as fans questioned her legacy.

“MMA fans and media are the most what have you done lately for us crowd of any sport,” Rousey told Bert Kreischer on his podcast. “You look at WWE and they have such a reverence for their legends. In MMA, it’s like the second that you’re not on top, you’re not s*** and you never were s***.”

Cyborg, a former UFC featherweight champion and the reigning PFL featherweight champion, has picked holes in Rousey’s argument, using the Brazilian’s own damning knockout defeat to Nunes to show the importance of not being a sore loser in maintaining fan goodwill.

“It's like a mirror – you show (the fans that you can take a loss) and then I think it'll return to you,” Cyborg told The Independent. “I don't have much losses, like two in my career, my first was Amanda Nunes. But I have fans stop me in the street and they're telling me ‘I was not your fan but I start (to) follow you after your loss to Amanda Nunes’.

“I'm telling you, I have a lot of people that come talk to me saying this – they say it’s because how you took (the loss) that day. So it's how you take the loss.

“I believe the way she (Rousey) showed how she lost and then she stopped fighting and then started to hate everybody, I think number one, you have to not blame nobody about what’s happening. A lot of things happen for you, sometimes it’s not your fault, it happens. If (at) some point you have a hard time, you have to learn something from that.”

Cyborg, 40, insists that she doesn’t share the same experience with the fans that Rousey lamented, citing her ability to use the haters to motivate her further.

“The message she gave to them, I don’t have this experience,” she added. “My fans, after my loss, they learned with me (how to) overcome. Now I’m seven years undefeated again after 14 years undefeated. Of course it’s not easy to take a loss but you have to improve and overcome.

“It’s sad the way she sees the fans but I love my fans. Even the people that hate me or not supporting me, they make me better. When people say something negative for me, I try to see what I can do better.”

Cyborg, boasting a record of 28-2 with one no contest, will defend her featherweight title for the first time in over two years on 13 December when she goes to battle with Australia’s Sara Collins at PFL Lyon.

The Brazilian last put her belt on the line when she stopped Cat Zingano at Bellator 300 in October 2023, shortly before the promotion was acquired by PFL. The title, which she has held since January 2020 and defended five times, has now been re-branded as the PFL’s women’s featherweight championship.

Cyborg is approaching the end of her career, confirming to The Independent that “next year is going to be my last year”. She has shared the cage with nearly every women’s MMA great across a decorated 20-year career, but there is one notable name missing from her resume: Rousey.

While a super-fight between the two was always difficult due to the weight difference, Cyborg asserts that she always wanted to settle their verbal disputes in the cage, and it was Rousey that was never willing to pull the trigger on getting a bout signed.

 “I always had the intention to fight her,” Cyborg said. “I was starting doing the diet and cutting weight for 135lbs. But in reality, I believe she never had the intention to fight me.

“I believe she was just using my name for promoting herself because when she started fight, I was already champion. I was a very big name in the sport and it was a smart strategy.

“My career is still great. I accomplished a lot of things over the 20 years in my career. I don't choose my opponents – if the fight was supposed to happen, for sure we were going to fight. For sure, it would have been one of the challenges of my career but this didn’t change my journey.”

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