Rose Namajunas Moves to Flyweight to Take on Manon Fiorot at UFC Paris

What A Fight!!@RoseNamajunas will face @ManonFiorot_MMA at #UFCParis!!

Get your tickets 🎟️ https://t.co/vwLifSPSne pic.twitter.com/0b15gjUB9c

— UFC Europe (@UFCEurope) June 23, 2023

The former two-time Ultimate Fighting Championship strawweight queen is taking her trade to a new division.

According to MMA Junkie on Friday, Rose Namajunas (11-5) will be relocating to 125 pounds on Sept. 2. At that UFC Fight Night 226 event in Paris, she will be meeting top contender Manon Fiorot (10-1). News of this pairing has since been confirmed by the UFC shortly after it broke.

This will be the former 115-pound titleholder’s first trip back to flyweight since she was an amateur, all the way back in 2011. “Thug Rose” surrendered her throne to Carla Esparza a second time in May 2022, dropping a razor-close split decision to her nemesis. That defeat snapped an impressive three-fight win streak, with a revenge decision over Jessica Andrade followed by two victories over Weili Zhang in 2021.

Fiorot has been a woman possessed since joining the roster in 2021, racking up five straight wins over increasingly stiff competition. A pair of knockouts over Victoria Leonardo and Tabatha Ricci springboarded her into a matchup against Mayra Bueno Silva in later 2021. Upon emerging victorious on the scorecards, this set “The Beast” up for higher-stakes matches against Jennifer Maia and Katlyn Chookagian in 2022, both of which she passed to make her one of the top-ranked women in her division.

UFC Fight Night 226, also known as UFC Paris, will be appropriately held in Paris at the Accor Arena on Sept. 2. Headlining the fight card will be a heavyweight fracas between Ciryl Gane and Sergey Spivak for a potential title shot. While the bout listing is otherwise limited and the order is far from set, other featured matchups include a light heavyweight tilt between Volkan Oezdemir and Azamat Murzakanov, and a pair of women’s bantamweight contests when Nora Cornolle makes her debut against Joselyne Edwards while Zarah Fairn dos Santos battles Hailey Cowan.