5 highly-rated fighters who could sign with the UFC in 2018

#3 Jennifer Maia

Jennifer Maia is the world's best female Flyweight

2017 saw the UFC introduce another new weight class to their roster – Women’s Flyweight (125lbs) – and as they had done when they introduced Women’s Strawweight back in 2014, they used a season of The Ultimate Fighter to crown the inaugural champion. Unfortunately – and no offence to the winner and current UFC champ Nicco Montano – winning TUF doesn’t make you the best female Flyweight in the world – that title already belongs to Jennifer Maia.

The current holder of the Invicta Flyweight title, Maia fights out of the legendary Chute Boxe camp in Brazil, and while the glory days of the team – when Wanderlei Silva and Shogun Rua ran roughshod over PRIDE – are long gone now, the name alone still holds a certain gravitas with MMA fans.

Maia fights with the aggression-first style you’d expect from a Chute Boxe fighter and actually competed in professional boxing before her MMA career started. But she’s also a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt with almost as many submissions to her name as knockouts.

With wins over former UFC title challengers Roxanne Modafferi and Jessica Andrade, as well as other tough opponents like Vanessa Porto, Zoila Frausto and her most recent challenger Agnieszka Niedzwiedz, it’s clear that Maia is the real deal. With the UFC now having plenty of the world’s top female Flyweights under their umbrella, surely it’s time for them to ink a deal with the Invicta champion?