UFC to introduce women’s flyweight division, champion will be crowned on The Ultimate Fighter

Just months after crowing its first ever female featherweight champion in Germaine de Randamie, the UFC now has plans to introduce a 125-pound women’s division. For smaller female bantamweights, such as Jessica Eye, and strawweights who had a difficult time making the cut to 115-pounds, like the recently released Valerie Letourneau, this is undeniably good news. This development is also likely to spark the interest of dominant strawweight queen Joanna Jedrzejczyk, who has previously stated interest in fighting for flyweight gold, should the UFC introduce the division.

The first-ever UFC women’s flyweight champion will be crowned on the next season of The Ultimate Fighter, which is also how they crowned the strawweight division’s first ever champion, Carla Esparza. All women currently signed with the UFC will be allowed to audition for this season of TUF, as will unsigned women.

This news was announced in a Wednesday evening press release from the UFC.

Though this marks the official introduction of the UFC’s female flyweight division, the organization has promoted one women’s flyweight fight in the past, having pitted Joanne Calderwood against Valerie Letourneau against each other at 125 pounds in Ottawa, Canada in June of 2016.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 5/3/2017.