Opinion: An Uncertain Future

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.

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Considering that women only debuted in the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2013 and have been evolving by leaps and bounds ever since, one should expect startling changes. Despite this, I doubt anyone could have predicted in 2016 that the women’s bantamweight division—which Ronda Rousey glamourized and was populated by stars in their primes like Holly Holm, Miesha Tate, Amanda Nunes and, at the time, Valentina Shevchenko—would be a relative wasteland by 2022 and by far the weakest of the UFC’s three full women’s weight classes. Moreover, it’s continuously falling further and further behind both the skill and excitement of women’s strawweight and flyweight. The latter is not only a relatively new division that crowned its first champion, Nicco Montano, in December 2017, but one that has to compete with Bellator MMA for talent; the bantamweight division does not. Let’s examine the sorry state of women’s bantamweight today, its future and why it happened.

Nunes reclaimed her bantamweight title at UFC 277 with a one-sided decision over an endlessly tough Julianna Pena, but it’s clear that, at 34, she’s not what she once was in terms of her aura of invincibility or her actual martial arts skill. Despite vastly surpassing Pena in every single physical skill, dropping her in the striking department about a dozen times, taking her down at will and unleashing brutal ground-and-pound, Nunes did not finish her in the rematch and often looked like she had little interest in doing so. Perhaps she was too concerned with conserving her energy and not gassing out like she did the first time around. She also gave Pena too many opportunities, whether with submission attempts or being hit with flush strikes. That’s quite different than the legendary, brutal finisher who decimated Rousey, Tate, Holm, Germaine de Randamie and Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino inside of a round. It isn’t an aberration, though. We saw the same showing against Felicia Spencer, the de Randamie rematch in back-to-back fights and in four of her last five outings, a quick stoppage of Megan Anderson being the exception. There’s also the question of whether or not Nunes is even going to keep fighting much longer. She has been a professional martial artist for over 14 years, accomplished everything she possibly can in the sport, made a lot of money and would have a secure post-retirement life. Plus, no major fights loom on the horizon.

Unfortunately, the bigger problems arise when one looks at the crop of potential challengers and successors. Irene Aldana has a couple of nice knockout victories over Ketlen Vieira and Yana Kunitskaya, but she owns an uninspiring record of 13-6, lost to a tough veteran in Raquel Pennington and was completely dominated by Holm. She’s also 34 years old and been a pro for 10 years, so she seems more likely to decline than improve. Not only can one easily name 10 women’s strawweights and flyweights more skilled and impressive than her, but it’s even harder to imagine Aldana headlining or co-headlining UFC pay-per-views when considering that even an all-time great champion in her prime like Nunes struggled to do so; she garnered fewer than 90,000 buys for her featherweight title defense against Spencer and a meager 85,000 buys for the Pennington bout. Speaking of Pennington, she might be the top contender right now. Her toughness, persistence and improvements are an inspiration for any martial artist, but would anyone be excited about her as the new champion of the division? She was always someone the elite of the division—Nunes, de Randamie and Holm (twice)—soundly defeated. She also turns 34 in a month.

Vieira is another contender and a little younger at 30 years old. Her grappling is good but not quite dangerous enough to defeat the better fighters of the division, and her striking is fairly average, making for close fights against anyone with solid grappling. Since a first-round knockout loss to Aldana, her striking has improved some, as she won a competitive 29-28 decision over Sijara Eubanks, lost a controversial decision to Kunitskaya, edged out Tate in a close five-round contest and then won a contentious split decision over a 40-year-old Holm who suddenly looked very old that. Most people thought Holm should have won on the scorecards. To demonstrate the difference in talent level between bantamweight and flyweight, one fight after barely losing to Vieira at bantamweight, Tate went down to flyweight and was utterly dominated by Lauren Murphy, who recently turned 39. I could go on, but the point should be clear. No one at 135 pounds other than Nunes is a star, particularly skilled when compared to contenders in the two other divisions or even close to any kind of PPV draw. Moreover, no exciting prospect is on the horizon, which is stupefying considering all the talented young fighters at 115 and 125 pounds. What will happen to women’s bantamweight going forward?

Well, the worst-case scenario is that Nunes retires, we get something like Pena-Pennington or Pena-Aldana for the title and the division utterly loses its luster and relevance for years to come. Realizing this, I think the UFC will do everything in its power to keep her around. As utterly one-sided as Nunes-Pena 2 was on Saturday in Dallas, it was fairly entertaining, so perhaps the next championship fight will indeed be their rubber match.

Now we come to the interesting question: How did this happen? One immediate reason is that female fighters are cutting more weight now, causing many former bantamweights to become flyweights. Consider that Shevchenko is a former bantamweight, as was former strawweight champion and flyweight title challenger Jessica Andrade. That is also true of second-ranked flyweight Taila Santos and a slew of others, including Murphy, Kaitlyn Chookagian, Jennifer Maia and current Bellator champion Liz Carmouche. It’s harder to find female fighters big enough to make bantamweight. Nunes is 5-foot-8 and walks around at 162 pounds, and she isn’t even particularly large for the division. Certainly, this has significantly weakened the weight class.

Yet, I don't think that’s the whole answer. The size requirements are not so great that there still shouldn’t be more talented bantamweights; and there should be more incentive when considering how much easier it is to get to the top of the division in comparison to flyweight. Perhaps this will resolve itself as certain fighters realize the opportunity. Chookagian or Maia moving back to 135 pounds would certainly improve the division considerably, and either one would have more of a chance to defeat Nunes than the current crop of contenders. Still, it’s strange how quickly this happened, and for once, I don’t have a complete answer.

Regardless, the future of the UFC women’s bantamweight division doesn’t look bright, especially when compared to its constantly improving sisters at strawweight and flyweight.