UFC considering women's flyweight division for Season 26 of 'The Ultimate Fighter'

Kevin Iole
·Senior boxing/MMA columnist
Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate is now retired, but she’d be a great candidate to join the flyweight division if the UFC creates it. (Getty Images)
Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate is now retired, but she’d be a great candidate to join the flyweight division if the UFC creates it. (Getty Images)

The one glaring hole on the UFC’s roster for the last several years has been the absence of a women’s flyweight division.

It appears that will be rectified on the upcoming season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” the UFC’s reality series which has developed so much talent for the company in its 12 years of existence.

The UFC is considering featuring women’s flyweights on Season 26, which will begin filming in July and will be broadcast in September. When Yahoo Sports contacted UFC president Dana White for comment on the decision, he said the news release announcing the upcoming season was sent in error and that it hadn’t been finalized.

If it is, it will add a fourth women’s division, joining strawweight, bantamweight and featherweight.

Given it’s a weight that is more natural for women than bantamweight and featherweight, the UFC will open the auditions to women currently in the promotion who are competing at strawweight and want to move up or at bantamweight and want to move down.

Given that, the competition at flyweight may be the best of the four women’s divisions.