A weight class once thought to be on life support will crown a new champion on Saturday night. Or will it?
Despite widespread rumors the UFC was going to ditch the men’s flyweight division, which was accompanied about a year back by an obvious paring back in the roster of 125-pounders, the division lives.
Joseph Benavidez, one of the greatest fighters never to hold a UFC title, will meet Brazil’s Deiveson Figueiredo in the UFC on ESPN+ 27 main event Saturday.
The bout originally was set to fill the vacancy left by Henry Cejudo, who defeated longtime standard-bearer Demetrious Johnson at UFC 227 to claim the championship, then went on to win the bantamweight title at UFC 238 before relinquishing the former late last year.
However, Friday morning’s weigh-ins brought a wrinkle: Figueiredo missed the championship weight limit by 2.5 pounds, coming in at 127.5. That means if Benavidez wins, he’ll become champion. If Figueiredo is victorious, the title will remain vacant.
We’re not going to lie to you and act like Saturday night’s card is the deepest or most intriguing the promotion has ever lined up. But the potential of a new champion’s coronation in a fight that looks solid on paper is enough to merit giving this show a look all on its own. And a pair of fights that amount to de facto auditions for a shot at UFC women’s featherweight queen Amanda Nunes offer yet another fine reason to tune in.
UFC on ESPN+ 27 takes place Saturday at Chartway Arena in Norfolk, Va. The card streams on ESPN+.
Without further ado, then, here are four burning questions heading into UFC Norfolk.
Will Joseph Benavidez finally capture his elusive world title?
If one judge had scored one round differently at WEC 50, Benavidez (28-5 MMA, 15-3 UFC) would have defeated Dominick Cruz for the bantamweight title.
If one judge had scored one round differently at UFC 152, Benavidez, not Johnson, would have been the first UFC flyweight champion.
Those razor-thin margins in a pair of split decisions mark the difference between Benavidez getting counted among the ranks of world champions many years ago, and his distinction now as one of the greatest fighters never to hold a major belt.
Now he’s finally getting another chance to change that status. Benavidez, who also lost a rematch to Johnson via knockout in 2013, has 20 victories in Zuffa counting his WEC days. And this fight with Figueiredo (17-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC) isn’t just a lifetime achievement award in and of itself: He’s won three straight and nine of 10, a run that includes a victory over Cejudo to earn another crack at the gold.
Benavidez will be remembered as one of the great ones regardless of what happens Saturday. But as Michael Bisping can tell you, getting the title toward the end makes all the perception difference in the world.
What happens if Deiveson Figueiredo wins?
Maybe the ongoing drama in the flyweight division is karma’s way of telling the UFC to stop half-assing it and either get in or get out.
Either way, should Figueiredo win Saturday night, you have to wonder if the UFC will even bother giving the title another go.
The UFC had one of the all-time greats in Johnson, mispromoted him to the degree you wondered if Dana White really was all he was cracked up to be, then let him go to ONE Championship. Cejudo appeared to be the division’s savior. Then he vacated the belt.
If the UFC is serious about rebuilding the division, Benavidez would make a capable standard-bearer for 125 pounds as the process plays out.
If Figueiredo is victorious? Not only would “Mighty Mouse” and Cejudo be out of the picture, but now, the most recognizable remaining name in Benavidez would be 0-3 in flyweight title fights, and the belt would stay vacant after the guy who missed weight won.
Why would the promotion even bother, at that point?
And it’s entirely possible Figueiredo wins. You don’t put together a 17-1 record, win six of seven UFC fights and finish two former title challengers along the way if you don’t belong at this level, even if your first career weight miss came at the most inopportune time.
Can Felicia Spencer rebound from her loss to Cris Cyborg?
The last we saw of Felicia Spencer, the former Invicta FC featherweight champion put in a game performance against Cris Cyborg, but was also on the wrong end of a convincing, one sided-loss.
Who would have known at the time of their UFC 240 fight that Cyborg would be Bellator champion before Spencer (7-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC) returned to the octagon?
But the eventful seven months in the world of women’s featherweight MMA since Cyborg vs. Spencer has given the latter a clean slate as she gets set for her octagon return, where she’ll meet Zarah Fairn (6-3 MMA, 0-1 UFC).
Spencer was undefeated for a reason heading into the Cyborg fight, displaying a finisher’s killer instinct that belied her relative lack of cage time. If she takes the right lessons from her first career loss – one in which she showed plenty of resilience against one of the sport’s toughest competitors – then she should be well on pace to assert herself for a shot at Nunes’ 145-pound belt.
Or is it Megan Anderson’s time to shine?
But then, despite what we just said about Spencer, maybe it’s Megan Anderson’s time to get a shot at Nunes’ 145-pound title.
Nunes, who also holds the bantamweight belt, has not defended the featherweight title since her famed knockout of Cyborg on Dec. 29, 2018. She’s coming due to defend featherweight gold.
The fact there are two women’s featherweight bouts on this card, in a shallow division that rarely sees any fights, seems to suggest the UFC is conducting an unofficial mini-tournament to see who should get the next title shot.
If that’s the case, we have to consider that Spencer submitted Anderson in May 2019 at UFC Rochester. Anderson took all the right cues from that loss and has changed her approach, which paid off in a spectacular win over Fairn at UFC 243.
In order to vault ahead of Spencer in the pecking order, she’ll have to put on a real show against the debuting Norma Dumont (4-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC). Given how Anderson looked last time out, she seems well in control of, well, the things she can control.
