Cris Cyborg isn't making the UFC's job easy when it comes to the women's featherweight title. But should she?

There’s an old saying, and here I’m paraphrasing just a tad, but it goes something like this: If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them Dana White’s plans for Cris Cyborg.

It happened again just this week. Almost as soon as the UFC president went on record promising that Cyborg vs. UFC women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes was “the fight to make” and “the fight (White) will make,” the UFC women’s featherweight champion popped up with other ideas.

“As a world champion it is important that you face the (No. 1) contender,” Cyborg (19-1 MMA, 4-0 UFC) wrote on her official website on Thursday. “That is what makes it sport and not entertainment, otherwise what are the girls fighting at (145 pounds) training to work towards if they know they will never be given a title shot even if they become the best in the world? I have a responsibility to the sport to ensure that when I retire the division continues to exist, and it is because of that I want my next fight to be against a contender from the featherweight division that has fought at (145 pounds) within the last year.”

There are a couple problems with that request. For starters, the UFC effectively does not have a women’s featherweight division. It has a champion, but no contenders. It’s the one weight class where it doesn’t even bother coming up with rankings. Saying you want to ensure that the division “continues to exist” is a little like organizing a charity to protect endangered unicorns.

The other problem is figuring out who that top contender might be. Cyborg initially set her sights on Invicta FC champion Megan Anderson (8-2 MMA, 4-1 Invicta FC), which made sense. She’s an actual featherweight, and she already owns a meaningful title in the division, so why not?

But Anderson may or may not be ready to fight in time to suit the UFC’s plans, and lately she’s remained almost intentionally opaque about her next move and the timetable for it, so that’s a problem.

Fortunately, Cyborg has a backup in mind, and it’s Invicta FC featherweight Pam Sorenson (5-2 MMA, 2-1 Invicta FC). By all means, go ahead and raise your hand if you saw that one coming.

Needless to say, Cyborg vs. Sorenson is not anybody’s idea of a dream fight, in large part because most fans have only heard of one of those two people. Sorenson is an undersized featherweight who isn’t even the top contender for the title in Invicta FC, much less the UFC. The one thing she has going for her, it seems, is that she already said she’d take the job.

You can see why that might not be enough for White and the UFC. If you’re going to pay Cyborg half a million bucks to fight, you want it to be an event. And while the promise of Cyborg beating up some poor soul who didn’t realize what she signed up for until the first punch landed has proved to be a surprisingly durable marketing strategy in the past, it’s not as appealing as the old champion vs. champion routine.

Still, Cyborg does have a point. You know, in a way. If the UFC is going to have a women’s featherweight title, shouldn’t there be a division to go with it? And if it’s just a one-woman show featuring Cyborg against a rotating cast of bantamweights, what happens when Cyborg isn’t around anymore? What is even the point of having this belt, other than to put something shiny on the event posters?

These are sound, logical arguments. They’re still not going to increase anyone’s excitement level for Cyborg vs. a series of largely anonymous victims. Cyborg vs. Nunes (15-4 MMA, 8-1 UFC), however? Sure, we’d watch that. Even if it makes us hypocrites.

What Cyborg wants is to be treated like the other champions. What the UFC wants is to profit off this one featherweight phenom without committing to a division that may or may not have much of a future without her.

It’s not hard to see it from both sides. It’s just that, for the majority of fans, there’s likely only one side they’d pay for at the moment.

For complete coverage of UFC 219, check out the UFC Events section of the site.