Breaking: Inaugural UFC Women’s Featherweight Title Bout Announced
It looks like Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino will get her wish for the UFC to implicate a female featherweight division, however, she won’t be getting the first crack at the division’s title.
The UFC has announced that former women’s bantamweight champion Holly ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ Holm will take on Germaine de Randamie at UFC 208 for the opportunity at becoming the first women’s 145-pound champion:
BREAKING! @HollyHolm & @IronLadyMMA to compete for the inaugural women's 145lb belt at #UFC208! https://t.co/K7ipM0TL4V pic.twitter.com/ZqAgaNJFFS
— UFC (@ufc) December 14, 2016
De Randamie is currently the No. 11-ranked bantamweight in the UFC, and is riding a two-fight win streak since being knocked out by current 135-pound champ Amanda Nunes in 2013. ‘The Iron Lady’s’ most recent victory came at UFC Fight Night 87 from her hometown of Rotterdam, Netherlands, where she finished Anna Elmose in the first round of their bout.
Holm is a former UFC bantamweight champion who is most famously known for handing former 135-pound queen Ronda Rousey her first professional mixed martial arts (MMA) loss, with a second round head-kick knockout in their main event meeting at UFC 193 in November of last year.
She comes off of a unanimous decision loss to No. 2-ranked Valentina Shevchenko from their main event meeting in Chicago back in July at UFC on FOX 20. The loss marked her second in a row and also the second ever in her MMA career.
Now these two women will have the opportunity to make history by becoming the first female champion of the UFC at 145 pounds, something that Invicta FC featherweight champion Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino has been campaigning for heavily as of late. It was reported that a title bout between Holm and ‘Cyborg’ was offered to the Brazilian, but she had to turn it down as she did not have enough notice to make the weight cut.
Holm and De Randamie will compete at UFC 208 for the inaugural UFC women’s featherweight championship live on pay-per-view (PPV), from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on February 11, 2017.
