It’s been a busy final few months of 2025 atop UFC’s three women’s divisions.
In October, after Weili Zhang vacated her strawweight title, Mackenzie Dern defeated fellow longtime 115-pounds contender Virna Jandiroba to take over the belt. Then, in November, Zhang moved up to flyweight, where she was outmatched by Valentina Shevchenko in a clash of the top two pound-for-pound women in the sport.
And here, in December, Amanda Nunes — only the greatest women’s fighter of all time — announced her return from retirement to challenge two-time Olympic gold medallist Kayla Harrison for the bantamweight strap she claimed only three fights into her UFC career. It’s a matchup so meaningful that the company chose to make it a co-main event at UFC 324, its first card under a $7.7-billion media rights partnership with Paramount beginning in the new year.
That’s left the ranked women in each division jockeying for position to be next in line for title shots once all the super fight dust has settled. First, Fatima Kline reasserted herself as a top 115-pounds prospect with a one-sided victory over Angela Hill at UFC 322. Then, Mayce Barber put it on Karine Silva last weekend at UFC 323 for her seventh straight win at flyweight.
Now, this Saturday, we’ll get two more meaningful women’s fights, each featuring a Canadian. Niagara Falls, Ont.’s Gillian Robertson is seeking to extend her four-fight win streak and fight her way closer to strawweight’s top-five against Amanda Lemos, while Toronto’s Melissa Croden will attempt to break into the bantamweight rankings with a quick turnaround against No. 15 Luana Santos.
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Here’s a closer look at those two matchups on UFC’s final card of 2025.
Amanda Lemos vs. Gillian Robertson
Robertson has been on a two-year roll, winning each of her last four contests and tying Nunes for most finishes in women’s UFC history with her 10th career stoppage two rounds into a clash with Marina Rodriguez in May. That TKO sent Rodriguez into retirement and gave Robertson the biggest name on her resume.
It’s a run that would’ve been hard to foresee only three years ago, when Robertson was toiling with a 10-7 record as a UFC flyweight. But at the beginning of 2023, she chose to drop down to 115-pounds, where she’s lost only once in six outings since — to No. 8-ranked Tabatha Ricci, who was able to keep their fight standing and out of Robertson’s preferred world on the mat.
That will always be the biggest question for Robertson to answer as she advances up her division — whether she can hang in with strikers who successfully defend her takedown attempts. Because there’s zero doubt how significant her advantage is when she gets opponents to the floor.
Robertson still holds UFC women’s flyweight records for submission wins, control-time percentage and top-position percentage, despite leaving the division three years ago. And at strawweight, she trails only Tatiana Suarez in control time percentage while holding a 10-point advantage on the recent title challenger in top position percentage.
That could make a potential matchup with Dern — the strawweight champion is a third-degree jiu-jitsu black belt — a fascinating clash of proficient grapplers. But a title shot is likely still at least two fights away for Robertson, who will have her hands full this weekend with Lemos.
The No. 5 strawweight is a skilled striker who can chew up opponents from range. She earned a title shot in 2023 (Zhang routed her in a dominant five-round decision) and has hung around the division’s top five ever since, fighting name brand strawweights such as Dern, Jandiroba and Suarez.
Lemos has a clear edge in experience, but Robertson — somehow still only 30, despite fighting 19 times in the UFC since 2017 — is nearly a decade younger. Entering the UFC at 22 has allowed Robertson to continually round out her skillset over time, and while far from her division’s heaviest hitters, she’s built out a solid defensive game on the feet and has myriad ways to get opponents to the ground.
A win Saturday could vault Robertson into strawweight’s top five, where she’d potentially be a win away from a title shot. One more over a top contender such as Suarez, Jandiroba or Yan Xiaonan ought to be enough to do it. That would make 2026 a massively important year for the always-active Robertson as she strives to ride her momentum all the way to Dern’s doorstep.
Melissa Croden vs. Luana Santos
The oldest of UFC’s three women’s divisions has suffered stagnation since the end of its heyday in the mid-2010s as one-time bantamweight icons Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm, Miesha Tate and Nunes all moved on from the promotion. It says something that there were only six fights, combined, between UFC’s current top eight ranked bantamweight women in 2025 — two of them contested at catchweights due to misses on the scales.
It’s a division starved for new contenders and it’s possible this weekend’s clash between the unranked Croden and No. 15 Luana Santos could be an early step toward one emerging.
Santos entered the UFC as a flyweight but decided to move up following a tough weight cut in her final appearance at 125-pounds, a unanimous decision loss to Casey O’Neill. And she looked right at home in her bantamweight debut, controlling veteran kickboxer Tainara Lisboa on the ground for most of two rounds before sinking an americana from mount.
Croden announced her presence at bantamweight with a stoppage of Lisboa as well, yet in much different fashion as she dropped the Brazilian in the second round and secured a finish shortly thereafter with relentless offence. It was her third straight TKO victory as Croden has used an aggressive, powerful style to first stand out in LFA and now earn her way to the UFC.
The 34-year-old hasn’t needed the judges’ scorecards in any of her dozen wins since debuting on the Western Canadian amateur circuit in 2016 and her lone loss in the last five years, to current No. 10 UFC bantamweight Jacqueline Cavalcanti in LFA, has aged well. Cavalcanti has won eight straight, her last five in the UFC.
Win again via stoppage on Saturday, and Croden will move within reach of her division’s upper echelon, which could rapidly empty out.
Harrison and Nunes likely aren’t long for fighting after they meet at UFC 324 in January. Nunes is 37 and coming out of retirement to fight for the first time in nearly three years. Harrison is 35 and can only make the extreme weight cut to bantamweight — she fought at 155-pounds in PFL — so many times. Along with former champions Julianna Pena (36) and Racquel Pennington (37) — ranked No. 1 and 2 in the division, respectively — they’re closing in on exits from the sport.
That could leave a considerable power vacuum atop the division by 2027 and a wide-open competition among 135ers to fill it. Norma Dumont, Ketlen Vieira, and Yana Santos are already close to the top. Macy Chiasson needs only a win to re-enter the fray. Joselyne Edwards won twice in 2025; Ailin Perez is undefeated in her last five; Karol Rosa was one of those five but has already bounced back with a win.
If the UFC can get some fights made between this group, there ought to be a lot of jockeying for position in 2026 as matters are sorted out at the top. And one of Santos or Croden can get an early step on that race with a statement performance this weekend.
