Top 10 most important UFC women’s main events
By Drake Riggs
6. Nicco Montano vs Roxanne Modaferri – The Ultimate Fighter Finale 26, 2017
It took the UFC long enough to finally bridge the gap between their bantamweight and strawweight divisions with flyweight…but they did it.
After two years since bringing in a second women’s division, the UFC announced that they would be bringing in a third with the 145-pound featherweights. This decision came as a big head scratcher primarily because the division would be coming before the much-needed 125-pound weight class that could act as a middle ground for fighters who were too big for 115 pounds and too small for 135 pounds.
Multiple fighters suffered from the lack of the division, most notably was former strawweight title challenger, Valerie Letourneau who found herself leaving the UFC for Bellator who had the division that the UFC didn’t.
Following the same idea that they had for strawweight, the UFC decided to introduce the flyweights through a season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Season 26 acted as the launchpad for the new division and among the cast was a returning member from season 18’s bantamweight roster, Roxanne Modaferri.
After being eliminated from the show and losing her UFC debut, Modaferri would drop to flyweight and re-invent herself after moving back to America after some time in Japan. In her time between TUF seasons, she would establish herself as one of 125’s very best fighters and enter into season 26 as the No.1 seed.
On the other end of the bracket, we had Nicco Montano. A young and rather inexperienced competitor but as we all quickly found out, there was more than met the eye with Montano.
Seeded at No. 14, Montano first took on theNo. 3 seed, UFC bantamweight turned flyweight and former Invicta FC champion, Lauren Murphy. Montano would surprise everyone and cruise past Murphy to bloody the No. 6, Montana de la Rosa before knocking off the No. 2 seeded and former top flyweight in the world, Barb Honchak.
For Modaferri, she would lose in the semi-finals to another former bantamweight, Sijara Eubanks but Eubanks would go on to miss weight for the inaugural title fight against Montano thus giving Modaferri the chance of a lifetime.
The fight was back and forth throughout and each woman showed how badly they wanted it. Hurting each other on separate occasions, and keeping it close and fastpaced in each round, it was Montano who would majorly edge the rounds out.
Modaferri was game for the full twenty-five minutes but Montano always had one step ahead of her and she would earn the unanimous decision to become the UFC champion of a division with a very promising and talent stacked future.