MMA fighter Cat Zingano remains indifferent about whether Cris Cyborg re-signs with Bellator, focusing on her own training and upcoming fights instead.
Cat Zingano is not concerned about whether current Bellator featherweight champion Cris Cyborg re-signs with the promotion or not. Zingano is set to face Leah McCourt in the co-main event of Bellator 293, and since signing with Bellator, the former UFC title challenger has gone 3-0, seemingly on a path to face Cyborg. However, the fight has not materialized. With a fight already scheduled, Zingano is no longer preoccupied with the potential matchup with Cyborg.
“At this point, I can’t really care, you know what I mean?” Zingano states. “Like, it’s hanging on to, I’m doing this or I’m doing that and trying to act like I can expect something hasn’t done anything for me, other than keep me on my toes at times where I should be resting. I don’t know, one minute I’m getting like trolled by her saying, ‘Sign the contract,’ and the other, it’s like, OK, but you don’t even have a contract. So what do you mean? I’m not signing the contract [because you’re not signed to Bellator], and I’ve said from the beginning, my only condition is that she tests clean on [with] independent drug testing and I’ll take the exact same test. I just want everything to stay fair. And if she leaves, I can’t care; if she stays, I can’t care. I’ve just got to focus on me and my training and my life, and I guess we’ll see what happens.”
Zingano had hoped to return to the Bellator cage sooner, but according to her, potential matchups did not come together for various reasons. With regards to title aspirations, she refuses to let uncontrollable factors bring her down. If there is a date and an opponent, Zingano is up for the challenge, but she admits that the journey from her most recent victory against Pam Sorenson at Bellator 282 to her upcoming fight has been somewhat frustrating.
“So at my last fight — which was June 24th — in all the interviews, I was being told that the winner of that fight was gonna get to fight for the title. They were telling me it would be right before the holidays. So [it’s then] June, take a couple of months off and then [I was told my next fight would] probably right before Thanksgiving or Christmas or something like that, and then that got postponed. I think they told me that Cyborg is no longer on contract anymore, so she was gone and, I don’t know, I think they just didn’t really know what to do with that. Then, from that point on it was kind of, is this a vacant fight, a vacant title? Is it an interim title? Is it gonna be a title? Is it whatever? And the conversations just kind of kept going everywhere except direct, and they promised me the beginning of January was gonna be the first fight, and then they said February and now here we are in March. So my adrenaline was kind of going the whole time, expecting that I was going to jump into camp and I kept training. So I’m glad something came up, and even this, I wasn’t sure if this was gonna be a five-round fight against Leah McCourt, or if it was going to be a three-round regular fight like this because, again, they’re saying Cyborg doesn’t have a contract with Bellator. So, yeah, I’m happy to be getting ready and happy to have this competition coming up.”