Cris Cyborg is vamping up her striking training heading into her UFC featherweight title bout with Megan Anderson at UFC 214 next month (Sat. July 29, 2017), as she has brought in North American Boxing Federation middleweight champ Claressa Shields.
The two-time Olympian recently sparred with Justino earlier this week and praised Justino’s performance inside the ring, stating that she believes the Brazilian would do great in a transition over to boxing:
“I looked at (Cyborg’s films) and I was like ‘ok, I see a few things that I wanna tell her to work on,’ and then, the best way to learn is from experience,” Shields said. “From today, she’d be a great transition in over to boxing. It would be not be hard for you. A year of just training in boxing, six months, you’ll able to take on some of the top girls.
“She’s physically strong, physically fast, very athletic. Only thing, you just gotta work on the whole breathing thing. I think MMA and boxing is like swimming and running, especially when it comes to breathing. Cris is strong, she’s fast.”
Me and @criscyborg sparring a small clip ❤️? pic.twitter.com/PDYwhOEtDJ
— ClaressaT-rexShields (@Claressashields) June 25, 2017
Shields also stated that she believes Cyborg would give undefeated WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO welterweight champ Cecilia Braekhus a “really good fight”:
“It’d be a heck of a match-up between her and Cris,” Shields said of 31-0 boxer Cecilia Braekhus, who holds the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO welterweight belts. “That would be a really good fight. Wouldn’t be like Cecilia Braekhus would just have in the bag. And long as Cris is in shape, gets the boxing down and be focused on it, it would be very, very competitive.”
“It’s really hard from MMA because you have to train and mix everything, you train jiu-jitsu, you can’t focus in one thing,” Cyborg said. “Imagine with one year, just training boxing, I think it would be really nice. I’m interested, maybe one day.”
“You’d be a monster,” Shields said.
H/T MMA Fighting for the transcriptions
