Is Cris Cyborg-Holly Holm winner the greatest female fighter of all time? Neither will go that far

The women’s featherweight title is on the line next week when champion Cris Cyborg and Holly Holm meet at UFC 219, so already a lot is at stake, but it feels like more than just a title fight.

This feels like a legacy fight.

To put it clearly: Is the winner of the Dec. 30 pay-per-view headliner in Las Vegas the greatest female fighter of all time?

Consider each woman’s resume, beginning with the champion.

Cyborg, 32, is a pioneer of women’s MMA, who’s dominance in the sport is unmatched. She hasn’t lost since her debut in 2005, with 15 of 18 career wins via TKO. She was a former Strikeforce and Invicta FC champion before winning the UFC title in July with a TKO of Tonya Evinger. And Cyborg has defeated the who’s who of the sport, including Gina Carano for the Strikeforce title in 2009 in what was considered at the time the biggest fight in the history of women’s MMA.

If you add a win over Holm (11-3 MMA, 4-3 UFC) – her biggest challenge to date – to that already impressive resume, doesn’t that solidify Cyborg (18-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC) as the female GOAT?

“I never think like that,” Cyborg said Thursday during a conference call with reporters. “I think always, you know, each fight I respect my opponents. I have a lot of girls I’ve already fought. I think Holly’s a great fighter for me, because she’s a big name, too. She has a lot of fights, a lot of experience. I think it’ll be a great fight.

“I’ll leave the people to think like that about me. I don’t think like that. I have to think about getting better each fight.”

And what about Holm? You can’t ignore the 36-year-old’s decorated boxing career, which started in 2002, with Holm posting a 33-2-3 record while winning multiple championships in three different weight classes. She transitioned to MMA professionally in 2011 and joined the UFC in 2015, capping off her first year in the organization with the biggest win in MMA history by knocking out Ronda Rousey to become women’s bantamweight champ at UFC 193.

A win over Cyborg would make Holm the first woman to win UFC titles in two divisions and give her wins over the undisputed two biggest names in the history of the sport. Surely that would make Holm the female GOAT, right?

She’s not looking at it that way.

“I know that a win would definitely be a huge thing for my legacy and my career, but it’s definitely not something that would just define it right now,” Holm said. “Even with a win I would still want to push forward and be succeeding after this fight. There have been fights in my career that I’ve won that have helped with what I feel is my legacy, but each fight is not the defining fight. It’s the whole career and every opponent that’s gotten me to here, the whole journey along the way.”

Perhaps they’re thinking it on the inside, but neither woman will go so far as to say a win over the other solidifies their status as the female GOAT of MMA. There’s nothing wrong with that.

They’re focused on just winning.

“You have to be prepared for anything,” Cyborg said. “Can’t just go fight and think you’re going to finish in the first round. If it happens, yes, I’m very blessed about finishing my fights soon. But you need to train and prepare for everything. It’s MMA, 25 minutes. I can use all the tools I have.”

Said Holm: “She’s always been really aggressive in her fights, and she’s a strong opponent. That can be an intimidating type of fight. She might come aggressive, and she might not. We’re going to be prepared for either one. … It’s not like we’ve trained this whole camp (thinking), ‘OK, she’s aggressive, so she’s going to come forward, and let’s just do this.’ She might want to stop and counter. She might want to move more. She might want to work on her clinch, do wrestling. There’s a lot going on in an MMA fight, and we’ve been training to be ready for any of those situations.”

For more on UFC 219, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.