Former featherweight champ Germaine de Randamie booked for bantamweight return

Germaine de Randamie (8-3), who became the UFC’s first-ever women’s featherweight champion earlier this year, is officially returning to bantamweight. The former champ has been booked for a scrap with Marion Reneau (7-3-1), which will go down on September 2 in Rotterdam, in de Randamie’s home country of The Netherlands.

This matchup was announced by the UFC.

She’s back! @IronLadyMMA returns to bantamweight at #UFCRotterdam vs. @BelizeanBruiser!

Pre-Sale Code: UFCSOCIAL ➡️ https://t.co/2U4bjPcBg2 pic.twitter.com/bS8ZtfHIja

— UFC Europe (@UFCEurope) July 20, 2017

De Randamie won the UFC featherweight title in the main event of UFC 208 earlier this year, when she scored a controversial decision win over Holly Holm. Several months later, she was stripped of that title for her outright refusal to fight featherweight number-one-contender Cris “Cyborg” Justino.

“Germaine and her team have talked, and the position is that she will not fight ‘Cyborg’ because ‘Cyborg’ is a known and proven cheater,” he manager Brian Butler told MMAJunkie back in May. “Even after so much scrutiny has been put on ‘Cyborg,’ she still managed to pop for something and will always be a person of suspicion who is trying to beat the system rather than just conforming to the rules.”

“Germaine and her team don’t believe that ‘Cyborg’ should be allowed to compete in the UFC at all,” Butler added. “If that is the only fight the UFC wants, then Germaine is willing to wait and see if the UFC will strip her belt before making her next move.”

Having been stripped, de Randamie has returned to bantamweight for this battle with Reneau. Reneau was last seen in the Octagon in March, when she battled Bethe Correia to a draw. Prior to that, she picked up a nice TKO win over Milana Dudieva.

Here’s the UFC Rotterdam lineup as it currently stands:

• Stefan Struve vs. Alexander Volkov (heavyweight main event)
• Germaine de Randamie vs. Marion Reneau
• Desmond Green vs. Rustam Khabilov
• Marcos Rogerio de Lima vs. Saparbek Safarov
• Abu Azaitar vs. Siyar Bahadurzada
• Francimar Barroso vs. Aleksandar Rakic
• Abdul-Kerim Edilov vs. Bojan Mihajlovic
• Islam Makhachev vs. Michel Prazeres
• Bryan Barberena vs. Leon Edwards

How do you think Germaine de Randamie will do in her bantamweight return?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/20/2017.