This year, the UFC unlocked the women’s featherweight class to showcase Cristiane ‘Cyborg’ Justino – a fighter who is now benched for the foreseeable future after yet another run-in with the drug police.
If this weekend’s UFC pay-per-view feels like a slap-and-dash creation, it’s probably because it is.
The Nevada-based promotion has a seemingly non-stop schedule. One of the biggest drawbacks to keeping that pace is that it’s no longer possible to plan ahead.
Under the boxing model, promoters come together to create a big fight, then agree upon the best location for that bout to take place.
The UFC doesn’t have that luxury.
Instead, the year is booked months in advance and matchmakers Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard have the unenviable task of filling the gaps provided.
In the case of UFC 208 this Sunday, a date was scheduled in Brooklyn long ago, with little-to-no thought as to what blockbuster fight would entice fans to plop down 50 dollarydoos for the pay-per-view feed.
The plan at one stage was to schedule a championship unification bout between featherweight kings Jose Aldo and Max Holloway, but the newly-minted Hawaiian champion nixed those plans in a hurry.
With no better options on the table, the UFC decided to crown a women’s featherweight champion.
‘Cyborg’ was the top candidate to fight for the vacant title, but when she didn’t fit the rushed timeline, the promotion soldiered on without her, booking Holly Holm versus Germaine de Randamie.
That’s the same Holm who ruined Ronda Rousey with a head kick in 2015 but has since failed to capitalise on her new-found stardom, losing back-to-back bouts.
And de Randamie? You’ll be excused if you’re asking “who?” since she has almost exclusively been a dark match fighter during her up-and-down career in the UFC.
Either way, one of them will soon be the answer to a trivia question – as the first ever UFC women’s featherweight queen – but in the eyes of most fans, Sunday’s winner will be a paper champion.
The reality is, it would be tough to argue that the Holm-De Randamie victor is the world’s best featherweight just because they hold a belt.
Australia’s Megan Anderson made her case for being the cream of the crop last month when she captured the interim championship of the all-female fight promotion Invicta Fighting Championships. And in Bellator, Marloes Coenen and Julia Budd are set to join the conversation when they duke it out over the promotion’s women’s 145-pound title in March.
Then, of course, there’s ‘Cyborg’. She’s the official Invicta featherweight queen and undoubtedly the best fighter in the history of the division, whose only defeats over the past decade have been to urine sample collectors – once in 2011, when the champion fighter tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol and again this year when the drug hounds at the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) flagged her for a potential violation.
The Brazilian’s representatives insist her latest flunked test is a misunderstanding and that they are fighting to clear her name but the damage is already done.
The best case scenario – if Justino’s legal team can successfully argue that her failed test was for a doctor-prescribed substance designed to assist her body in recovering from a series of brutal weight cuts – will still probably keep her on the bench for the entire 2017 calendar.
At least in the beginning, Justino will be the elephant in the room at 145-pounds, as the talent-starved division attempts to find its footing without the marquee star it was created for.
A bloodied Tim Tszyu has been cruelly denied in his quest to emulate his legendary father Kostya and become a unified world boxing champion…
Liam Wilson has suffered further heartbreak in Arizona, the Australian boxer losing his super-featherweight world-title fight against Mexican Oscar Valdez. In front of a…
Tim Tszyu has the chance to emulate his legendary father as a unified world boxing champion after the stakes were dramatically raised for his…
Australia's Alexander Volkanovski has lost his UFC featherweight title to Ilia Topuria, with the Spaniard scoring a stunning second round knockout in the main…
Jason Moloney has survived an enthralling 12-round world title defence against Saul Sanchez in Canada, opening the door to a blockbuster unification fight in…
Conor McGregor says he's returning to the UFC for a fight against Michael Chandler on June 29 in Las Vegas, calling it the "greatest…
