SAN DIEGO, CA - DECEMBER 14: Strikeforce Women's Featherweight Champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos works out for the media at the Strikeforce Open Workouts at the Arena MMA Gym on December 14, 2011 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Josh Hedges/Forza LLC/Forza LLC via Getty Images)
World featherweight champion Cris "Cyborg" Justino may be on the cusp of achieving new levels of fame and success as her UFC debut nears. The fighter says that she isn't now, nor ever has been in the fight game for the money.
Rather, she does it for love. "I've been fighting almost ten years, eleven years, and I never fight for money," she recently told Submission Radio.
"I fight because I love this job and I know when you love your job and you work hard, God will bless you. And, you know, this is a dream."
Justino is living her professional dream out every day, but the women's title-holder has other, personal aspirations as well. "I want to have kids," she continued.
"I'm 30 now, in three years I'll be 33. This plan [will] still happen. It's still going on in my mind."
Justino explained that, though becoming a mother is in her plans and heart, a lot of planning will have to be done in order for that to happen the way she wants. "You have to do a lot of things before you have a kid," she said.
"You have to marry...it's a lot of things going on, not just having kids. But, this is the dream. It is still in my heart. And, I think that when you get to 30, this dream becomes more close than being a world champion of the division."
Still, Justino doesn't view being a mother and a fighter as mutually exclusive. In her mind, if and when she has a child, it would require time-off from competition, but needn't preclude a return to fighting, soon afterwards.
After all, "Cyborg" says she's had to go through prolonged periods without fights for various other reasons in her career, so she already knows that she can respond well to comebacks. "I don't think it [would] change anything if I stopped for one year to have a kid and came back to fight," she reasoned.
"I don't think it would be a big deal. I can do this. All my career [I've had long periods of time without a fight], a lot of times, and I always came back training.
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