Former champion Holly Holm has left the UFC and can discover free company.
Holm, a former girls’s bantamweight titleholder within the promotion and a boxing Corridor of Famer, nonetheless had fights left on her contract, however requested to be launched. Her request was granted, and she or he now will search for different alternatives in MMA or boxing, her agent Lenny Fresquez informed MMA Junkie following an preliminary report from Ariel Helwani.
Holm (15-7 MMA, 8-7 UFC), 43, pulled off one of many greatest upsets in MMA historical past a bit greater than 9 years in the past when she knocked out heavy favourite Ronda Rousey with a head kick at UFC 193 to win the ladies’s 135-pound title. The loss was the primary of Rousey’s profession.
However Holm misplaced the title to Rousey rival Miesha Tate 4 months later and by no means recaptured it. She had a shot to win again the title, plus two pictures on the UFC girls’s 145-pound belt during which she fell quick.
The loss to Tate set off a 2-5 hunch with setbacks in opposition to Valentina Shevchenko, Germaine de Randamie within the featherweight title combat, Cris Cyborg in a featherweight title combat, and Amanda Nunes in her last shot on the 135-pound belt.
Holm exits the UFC on a second-round submission loss to two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time PFL champion Kayla Harrison at UFC 300 in April 2024. That was on the heels of a submission loss to Mayra Bueno Silva 9 months prior, although that was overturned to a no contest when Silva failed a drug take a look at.
She began her MMA profession in her native New Mexico in 2011 and inside three years had a Legacy FC title. Quickly after, she was within the UFC and after wins over future champion Raquel Pennington and Marion Reneau, she received her shot at Rousey.
The beautiful knockout in Australia was a double bonus winner and most retailers’ Knockout of the Yr. It cemented Holm’s standing as an MMA star, as effectively.
Holm is likely one of the most adorned girls’s boxers in historical past with 16 title defenses unfold out over three divisions. She was a two-time Feminine Fighter of the Yr from The Ring journal, was inducted into the Worldwide Girls’s Boxing Corridor of Fame in 2017 and the Worldwide Boxing Corridor of Fame 5 years later.
Boxing alternatives for Holm might come in opposition to the likes of Cyborg, whom she misplaced to within the UFC. Cyborg’s standing as Bellator champion may very well be up within the air, however she’s additionally boxed lately.
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