Per sources, Cynthia Calvillo vs. Nina Nunes
is booked for July 9. It will be at flyweight, a 125-pound debut
for Nunes in the UFC. pic.twitter.com/gLvstIOofn— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN)
April 14, 2022
A notable Ultimate Fighting Championship flyweight is
changing her mind on moving back down to strawweight after all.
Per the UFC’s broadcast partner of ESPN
on Thursday, Nina Nunes
(10-7) will be moving up 10 pounds to flyweight, where she will
face fellow strawweight ex-pat Cynthia
Calvillo (9-4-1). Calvillo was previously booked against
Brianna
Fortino, but the latter was forced out of their 115-pound
affair for undisclosed reasons, stemming from a report by Alex
Behunin in March. Instead of remaining on that June 4 card at
strawweight, she will stay at flyweight at the UFC
Fight Night event on July 9, roughly one month later.
Advertisement
Nunes has not gotten her hand raised since 2018, when she took home
a decision over ex-title challenger Claudia
Gadelha. A pair of defeats to top contenders Tatiana
Suarez and Mackenzie
Dern blunted her momentum towards the top of the division, and
she also took time off to have a daughter with current UFC
featherweight champ Amanda
Nunes. Her return came against Dern, and she succumbed to an
armbar at the end of Round 1. Before falling short to Suarez, Nunes
had rattled off four victories over the likes of Angela
Hill, Randa
Markos and Gadelha.
Often struggling to make weight for the 115-pound class, Calvillo
officially moved to flyweight in 2020, where her opponent Jessica Eye
then missed weight. The win over Eye is the lone victory in four
UFC appearances at the division, with three consecutive defeats to
Katlyn
Chookagian, Jessica
Andrade and Andrea Lee –
the latter two by stoppage – have sent her tumbling down the
125-pound rankings. Initially signed at 3-0 as a pro, Calvillo
surged into the promotion’s roster by submitting Amanda
Bobby Brundage and Pearl
Gonzalez, but a later outing against Carla
Esparza ended her undefeated record back in 2017. This will be
Nunes’ first fight at 125 pounds since a flyweight clash in 2013
under the Invicta Fighting Championships banner.
Calvillo vs. Nunes is currently the highest-ranked fight on the
July 9 UFC Fight Night card thus far, but it only consists of three
matchups as of now. Ronnie
Lawrence will battle Saidyokub
Kakhramonov in the bantamweight division earlier on the lineup.
Additionally, the flyweight bout between Antonina
Shevchenko and Cortney
Casey has been bumped from April 30 to this event due to a
Shevchenko injury, with Shevchenko announcing this on her social
media on Thursday and
MMA Fighting reporting the new date.