Tito Ortiz: '100-Percent' Fight with Cris Cyborg and Ronda Rousey Will Happen

Cris "Cyborg" Santos will finally return to action in early April as part of Invicta Fighting Championships, but there is still a chance she could end up in the UFC as part of a superfight against current bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey.

Just last week after requesting for her release from Zuffa (parent company of the UFC and her former employers at Strikeforce), Cyborg signed a three-fight deal with Invicta beginning with her April 5 showdown against Ediane Gomes.

Over the weekend, UFC president Dana White sat baffled at the decision to sign a deal directly with Invicta when they had an offer on the table to put her under contract to the UFC and still let her fight in the all-women's promotion.

Now as Cyborg's manager, former UFC heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz, explains it there were more moving parts than just signing a deal with the UFC and going to fight in Invicta.

"We wanted to make the deal happen with the UFC. Negotiations were between me and Dana and it was for a four-fight deal with the fourth fight being against Ronda (Rousey), three fights going to Invicta and the fourth fight would be against Ronda. We were going to do a catchweight of 140 (pounds) and they said 'OK we'll call you back and we're going to find out,'" Ortiz explained in an exclusive interview with Bleacher Report on Sunday.

"I wait two days and I get a call back and they said 'no, we'll do an eight-fight deal, we'll send her to Invicta, have her fight three fights and next year we'll have her fight against Ronda at 140 possibly,' but there's no exact direction what (weight) they wanted to use. So it really came down to the factor of them going back and forth."

Ortiz says recent comments about how "irrelevant" his client apparently is, is becoming part of their ultimate decision to do a deal directly with Invicta for fewer fights overall, but hopefully strengthening their bargaining power if Cyborg wins all of those fights.

"Why would we allow our client to commit to such a long deal with no real plans or commitments to fight in the UFC? Why would we agree to a deal where an organization labels her as irrelevant as Dana (White) kept saying how irrelevant Cyborg was? We didn't run away from the fight. We just asked for her release to sign a three-fight deal with Invicta," Ortiz stated.

"She'll fight the No. 2 contender at 145 pounds and then she'll fight for the title against their 145-pound champ and then maybe Dana will have a little bit more respect for Cris Cyborg and value her as a counterpart for any superfight in women's MMA."

Ortiz may be a new player in the world of management for other fighters, but he negotiated and worked for his own career in the UFC for many years and now he believes he's in a unique position to use what he learned to help his clients.