Holly Holm treating every fight like it’s her last

Saturday evening in Brooklyn, New York, former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm will step into the Octagon against WMMA veteran Germaine de Randamie.

The fight will not only be the first women’s featherweight fight in the UFC, but also the first UFC women’s featherweight title fight. Given that UFC President Dana White stated several months ago that there weren’t enough top ranked women fighting at featherweight to create a division, fans are wondering what the landscape of the featherweight division will look like with Cris Cyborg’s absence.

Holly Holm spoke about the situation to MMAJunkie:

“We’re going to start to see a lot of 145-ers come out,” Holm said. “We’re going to start to see a lot of them get better because they’re going to know it’s attainable, that they have this opportunity that they can grasp onto, so they’re even going to take it more and more seriously.

“Look how many more girls came into the 135-pound division, the top-5 girls are not the same top-5 girls that they were three years, even two years ago. It’s all changed. I think two years ago, people thought, ‘Who is going to be the challenge for these girls?’ There’s not even the same top-5 anymore; it’s because it keeps growing. And who’s to say that’s not going to happen in the 145-pound division? People start to see that, they want to go for it.”

Given her recent skid, which includes losing the women’s bantamweight title, fans are wondering what another potential loss at featherweight could mean for Holm. The way she sees it, she could very well find herself bouncing between the two divisions:

“I think it just depends on the fight,” Holm said. “I think it depends on just one fight at a time. I can do every other one as far as weight is concerned. That’s not it, but it would just be – it turns on to every fight should be treated like it’s my last fight because I’m never promised another day, another fight. You never know what’s going to happen.

“So really I’m just focused on this one. I don’t really want to think – I don’t want to map out anything in the future because you really can’t. It’s a very unpredictable sport.”

on 2/9/2017.