UFC Women's Featherweight division

At the time of publishing this article, it has only been a few days since Julianna Pena's crazy upset victory over Amanda Nunes for her Bantamweight title at UFC 269, on 12/11/2021. Which got me thinking, sure Amanda and Pena are definitely going to run it back for an immediate rematch. They absolutely have to and Pena immediately offered a rematch, but as it stands we're waiting on Amanda's word for a rematch. Let's say it doesn't happen though for whatever weird reason. What about Amanda's Featherweight belt, what is she and the UFC going to do with that belt?

Without a shadow of a doubt the Women's Featherweight division is the weakest division in the UFC by a mile. For crying out loud they don't even have an official top 15 let alone 10 ranking, it's literally just Amanda at the top and no one else. It's just blank in the rankings on UFC.com under Women's Featherweight, ouch. So what exactly are we going to do? I'll mention an argument for both keeping and closing the division, then I'll give my personal opinion on what we should do.

Why Dana needs to disband the division

Cyborg is gone, Megan Anderson is gone, I doubt Holly Holm wants to go back up to Featherweight just to lose to Amanda again. So who's left?? Sadly the only real competition we can add to the Featherweight is if Dana magically steals Kayla Harrison from the PFL. There's really no big names we can add to the division to attract anyone and the big names are already gone.

Okay, so we don't focus on big names we focus on just pure quantity over quality and develop. Problem, who are you honestly going to book for a 145 fight right now for a regular fight. Let alone a championship fight. No disrespect to any female fighter that wishes to challenge Amanda for her belt but honestly who realistically has a chance at this weight? I literally can't think of any names. That's just not fair for both her opponents and Amanda's legacy, which will have this false narrative she was only good because she fought cans. As if Amanda really had a choice, the division was way too weak during her reign.

So how do we grow the division right now? Realistically, as it stands, the only real way to immediately buff up the Featherweight division is dilute the Bantamweight and let some of those bigger bantamweights move up. Unfortunately Bantamweight is already fairly top-heavy as is and losing some of the mid-card talent. It's great to have super star Miesha Tate back, and hopefully that will attract more talent both old and new to Women's Bantamweight to fill the void but who knows how long that will take. So, why have two diluted divisions when we can just disband the Featherweights to keep the Bantamweights strong?

The good news about closing the division, it doesn't need to be permanent, We can always reopen the division once it well actually becomes a viable division. Let's say Amanda retires or surrenders her belt after too much inactivity and no one wants to challenge her. Just retire the belt and division temporarily. Then we can revisit and reopen Women's Featherweight with a season of The Ultimate Fighter and crown that season's winner champion as we've already done before.

Why Dana needs to keep the division open

Ronda was absolutely DOMINATING the bantam weight division during her prime and there were never talks about disbanding the Bantamweight division. Anderson Silva, Demetrius Johnson, GPS, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Khabib, CCC, hell even Jon Jones. So many fighters over the years have been ridiculously dominant over their divisions. Especially when it came to Jones, Silva, and Khabib, the UFC was really throwing everything they had at these fighters and they just would not lose. But not once did the UFC ever utter a single peep of just throwing their hands in the air and quitting on the division. So why are they only doing that now with Amanda and her Featherweight division? Mighty Mouse was the only one whose division was threatened to be closed, but look where we are now and look how deep Men's Flyweight is now.

I know that's apples to oranges since most of the other divisions I just mentioned had established talent. But why just quit because Amanda is too dominant? I mean literally last week we just saw that she is beatable. Amanda IS mortal. Julianna just proved that last weekend. Dana has the Ultimate Fighter and his contender series to help find and develop talent, female Featherweight talent will come in time.

Let's develop young talent for cheap. I doubt having this division open is costing the UFC any money. Also, the UFC is basically having an event every weekend year round. Match makers need to fill out those cards somehow, and if you add more young fighters to actually fill out those cards it can only help. Even if they're bad matches, everyone started somewhere. You never know, you might just find a gem. It's such a small investment for a multi multi Billion dollar corporation. Just take the gamble, put in the man hours, pay the money and it will help immensely.

So, where do I stand?

I'm all for keeping the division open and really working hard on developing female 145 talent. It's going to take a ton of hard work but it will be worth it. I mean literally anything to keep the sport growing sign me up. Which reminds me, in due time we're going to talk about the men's 165lbs division Dana hates so much but that's a topic for another day. Sorry, that just reminded me about it. ANYWAYS, as mentioned above it's a drop in the bucket of the UFC's humongous bucket to keep said division open while having immense upside. Just keep the division open. It will take time, and that's fine. The Women's Featherweight is a very long play. Diamond hands Dana!!

TL:DR Keep the Women's Featherweight division open. Come on man.

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