A women’s flyweight fight between Jessica Andrade and Lauren Murphy has been signed for UFC 283 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 21st.
A former strawweight champion, the 31-year-old Andrade has been bouncing between 115lbs and 125lbs since losing the belt to Zhang Weili back in 2019.
Her flyweight debut came a year later, TKO’ing Katyln Chookagian to set up a title fight with Valentina Shevchenko, which she lost via TKO in the second round.
Andrade then got back on track with a first round TKO finish against Cynthia Calvillo last year, before opting to drop back down to strawweight last time out in April, picking up a submission win over Amanda Lemos in the opening round.
However, despite that success Andrade has now decided to move back up to flyweight and now faces the 39-year-old Murphy, who claimed a big scalp last time out when she defeated former bantamweight champion Miesha Tate in her divisional debut.
Prior to that Murphy had fought her way to a title shot against Shevchenko after amassing a five fight winning streak, but like Andrade she came up short against the dominant champion, losing out by unanimous decision.
Andrade vs Murphy joins a UFC 283 card in Rio that will also feature a fourth men’s flyweight title fight between Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno, while Johnny Walker goes up against Paul Craig and Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua fights Ihor Potieria in what may be his retirement fight.
