UFC releases official rankings for new women’s flyweight division with Nicco Montano at the top

Last weekend, Nicco Montano and Roxanne Modafferi stepped into the Octagon to compete in the first ever UFC women’s flyweight title fight. After five, fun, back and forth rounds, Montano came out on top, making history as the first female flyweight champ in UFC history.

Now a little under a week removed from this history-making fight, the UFC has released the official, top-15 rankings for it’s new women’s flyweight division. As expected, Montano sits atop these rankings, while the top five is populated by Sijara Eubanks, Lauren Murphy, Roxanne Modafferi, Barb Honchak, and Montana De La Rosa. The rest of these new rankings are populated by a slew of Ultimate Fighter veterans, as well as strawweight veteran Bec Rawlings and her recent foil Jessica Rose Clark.

WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT
Champion: Nicco Montano
1 Sijara Eubanks * NR
2 Lauren Murphy * NR
3 Roxanne Modafferi * NR
4 Barb Honchak * NR
5 Montana De La Rosa * NR
6 DeAnna Bennett * NR
7 Rachael Ostovich * NR
8 Jessica Rose Clark * NR
9 Mara Romero Borella * NR
10 Shana Dobson * NR
11 Gillian Robertson * NR
12 Kalindra Faria * NR
13 Melinda Fabian * NR
14 Bec Rawlings * NR Beaker
15 Emily Whitmire * NR

While all of the women in this top-15 deserve respect, we can expect these rankings to endure some pretty tectonic shifts in the near future, as many top UFC strawweights move up to flyweight, and many top bantamweights move down.

We know, for example, that fighters like Joanne Calderwood, Paige VanZant and even former champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk are likely to head north to flyweight, while bantamweights like Jessica Eye, and most notably, Valentina Shevchenko, are likely to move down. This injection of top talent into the new division will likely force a few of the fighters on the list above out of the rankings. Time will tell how it all shakes out.

Do you think Nicco Montano can hang on to the UFC flyweight belt?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/12/2017.