Jessica Aguilar a top female Strawweight has signed with the UFC after being released from her World Series of Fighting contract earlier this month.
Jessica Aguilar had long been considered the top female fighter at 115 pounds. This created a problem when the UFC decided to adopt the Strawweight division into their fold. She was still stuck trying to find opponents as champion of the WSOF while Luffa gobbled up all the top talent. A former opponent in Carla Esparza captured the title after the all female season of TUF. This let Jessica Aguilar lay claim that the belt should be hers.
That meant she could have held the title if Esparza still held the title, but Esparza promptly lost her title to current champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk who knocked her out. Now, Jessica Aguilar will be like every other fighter and have to climb her way to a title shot. Luckily, she will not have a hard road if she can get past her first opponent who is top three Strawweight Claudia Gadelha who had a very close match with the current champion.
Claudia Gadelha and Jedrzejczyk were undefeated and a title shot was on the line. It was a very close fight that Jedrzejczyk won by split decision. Gadelha was supposed to fight Aisling Daly in April of this year, but she had to pull out and was replaced by Randa Markos who won a late replacement decision. Now, Gadelha will continue her title aspirations when she faces off with Jessica Aguilar.
Jessica Aguilar has gone 14-2 over he last 15 fights and that is after a decent 5-3 start in professional fighting. That span includes two wins over one of the best female fighters ever in Megumi Fujii. If she is able to get past Gadelha in her debut it is not out of the realm of possibilities that she would face off with the winner of the title fight with Jessica Penne as the title challenger. This fight will take place at UFC 190 which takes place in Brazil headline by a Female Bantamweight title fight between the undefeated Ronda Rousey and Bethe Correia.