Of course, this being the UFC, the birth of the new division was not without complications. The inaugural champ, Germaine de Randamie, promptly decamped, citing both her day-job duties as a police officer in her native Netherlands and her belief that “Cyborg” was a performance-enhancing drug cheat as reasons for her refusal to defend. Fans bristled and the UFC stripped de Randamie of the belt, but the damage was done; women’s featherweight was off to a shaky start.
Justino quickly righted the ship, winning the vacant title with a destruction of former Invicta FC bantamweight champ Tonya Evinger and defending it on a regular basis ever since. Nonetheless, Cyborg’s UFC run -- four of her five opponents have been former bantamweights and three of five were plucked from Invicta expressly to face her -- has done little to dispel the popular perception that she is champion of a “Victim of the Month Club” rather than a true division. Unfortunately, Cyborg’s best chance to pick on someone her own size in the foreseeable future, Megan Anderson, lost decisively earlier this year to two-time unsuccessful title challenger Holly Holm, indicating that she is likely not ready yet for her own title shot.
UFC 232 offers a chance for “Cyborg” to change the story a bit. While her challenger is once again a bantamweight, 135-pound champ Amanda Nunes is both extremely skilled and a big-framed woman who has had difficulty making the bantamweight limit. The unique challenge presented by Nunes is evident in the fact that for the first time in a decade, Justino will enter the cage as only a moderate favorite, around 2:1, rather than a 10:1 or 20:1 laugher. Each woman in the UFC 232 co-headliner represents the greatest challenge the other has ever faced, and “Cyborg”-Nunes may well be the highest-level women’s fight ever.
This, then, is the short history of the UFC women’s featherweight title and the times it was won, lost or defended. It tells a story of an all-time great fighter who has spent most of a storied career waiting for a proper challenge, and who may finally have found it.
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