A women’s bantamweight fight between Ketlen Vieira and Raquel Pennington has been announced for UFC Fight Night 217 in las Vegas on January 14th.
The No.2 ranked Vieira had been hoping for a title fight against Amanda Nunes next after picking up back-to-back wins over former champions Miesha Tate and Holly Holm in her last two Octagon outings, leaving her with an overall 7-2 record in the UFC so far.
However, with double-champ Nunes taking an indefinite amount of time off after winning back the title from Julianna Pena earlier in the year, the 31-year-old Vieira will have to settle for going up against the No.5 ranked Pennington instead.
The 34-year-old former title challenger Pennington has also been in good form lately, having now compiled a four-fight winning streak that’s seen her beat the likes of Marion Reneau, Pannie Kianzad, Macy Chiasson and most recently Aspen Ladd.
Vieira vs. Pennington will join a UFC Fight Night 217 card that serves as the promotion’s first event of 2023 and is set to be headlined by middleweight action as Kelvin Gastelum takes on Nassourdine Imavov, while Geoff Neal goes up against Shavkat Rakhmonov.
