Cyborg: I felt like 'a slave' in UFC

Cris Cyborg is glad her time in the UFC ended in 2019.

Cyborg, a former UFC women's featherweight champion, parted ways with the promotion in August after a turbulent three-year stint. She signed with Bellator a month later and made her debut Saturday, finishing Julia Budd to capture the women's 145-pound title.

"Here, I’m happy," Cyborg said at the Bellator 238 postfight press conference, per MMA Fighting. "(In the UFC), I was not happy. I was working, I feel I was a slave, and I was not happy. Here, I’m happy, something I choose to be."

Cyborg had a rocky relationship with some of the UFC brass long before signing with the promotion in 2016. In 2014, UFC president Dana White said she looked like MMA legend Wanderlei Silva "in a dress and heels." In 2015, longtime UFC color commentator Joe Rogan joked on his podcast that Cyborg had male genitals. Rogan later apologized.

The Brazilian's relationship with White seemingly didn't change much after stepping into the Octagon for the first time. They went back and forth in the months after Cyborg's December 2018 title loss to Amanda Nunes; White claimed Cyborg had no interest in a rematch, while the fighter insisted that wasn't the case.

After Cyborg's final fight in the UFC, footage of a conversation between her and White was posted to her Instagram account. She later admitted her team doctored the video to misrepresent what White had said, and she apologized.

Cyborg, who won the UFC belt in 2017 and defended it twice before the Nunes loss, ended her UFC tenure with a unanimous decision win over Felicia Spencer at UFC 240 last July.