UFC CEO Dana White is open to the possibility of creating a “BMF” belt for female fighters, a decision that could lure this former champion out of retirement. Unfortunately, the fan-friendly title lost most of its aura after Charles Oliveira abandoned the concept and turned the UFC 329 main event into WrestleMania.
“Yeah, anything is possible,” White recently told reporters. “I dunno … yeah, why not?”
One thing White won’t create is additional weight classes (for either gender). The promotion dissolved
the women’s 145-pound (featherweight) class back in early 2023, whittling the selections down to strawweight (115 pounds), flyweight (125 pounds), and bantamweight (135 pounds).
“It’s the same answer as the expansion of the men’s weight, 165 pounds is too much, it screws up the other two divisions,” White said. “Listen, if there was a need for it and we thought it would work, we would have done it already. It’s not like anybody’s telling us ‘Oh shit, we never thought of that! Yeah, we should probably expand the weight classes!’ No.”
White and Co. would likely be open to one-off fights outside the standard categories for the right opportunity (like this one) but it’s probably time to move on from the weight class debate, which continues on the men’s side regarding a 165-pound division that only happened once back in late 2021.
