{"id":945200,"date":"2026-10-29T13:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T13:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945200\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T13:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T13:32:09","slug":"ufc-picks-back-up-fighter-for-harrison-vs-nunes-at-madison-square-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945200\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC picks back-up fighter for Harrison vs. Nunes at Madison Square Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">No matter what happens in the coming weeks, someone is gonna fight for the UFC women\u2019s bantamweight title at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-fight-cards\/474241\/latest-ufc-334-fight-card-start-time-date-location-gane-vs-hokit-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC 334<\/a> on November 12th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Sources have confirmed that No. 1 ranked women\u2019s 135 pounder Joselyne Edwards will travel to New York City and weigh in as the official backup to the Kayla Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes title shot set to take place at Madison Square Garden. The news was first reported by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmafighting.com\/ufc\/518223\/joselyne-edwards-to-serve-as-backup-fighter-for-kayla-harrison-vs-amanda-nunes-at-ufc-334\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MMA Fighting\u2019s<\/a> Guilherme Cruz and Damon Martin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cLa Pantera\u201d is 9-4 in the UFC and currently on a five fight win streak, four of which came via finish. Her last win came at UFC Vegas 116 in April where she took a unanimous decision win over Norma Dumont.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">For a hot minute, the UFC was booking backup fighters for many of their title fights. These days its less often with the promotion only putting someone on the scale as insurance three times in 2026. Michael Morales weighed in as Islam Makhachev vs. Ian Machado Garry backup, Diego Lopes weighed in as Ilia Topuria vs. Justin Gaethje backup, and Mauricio Ruffy weighed in for Max Holloway vs. Conor McGregor backup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Now Edwards will weigh in as backup for Kayla Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes, and it\u2019s not too hard to imagine a scenario where she could step in and fight. Harrison cuts <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/latest-news\/432880\/kayla-harrison-reveals-featherweight-ultimatum-as-weight-cut-is-taking-years-off-my-life\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an insane amount of weight<\/a> to get down to women\u2019s bantamweight. She\u2019s never missed weight before, but the cut is clearly getting harder. Nunes has never missed weight in 21 bouts at 135 pounds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Joselyne can\u2019t say the same: she\u2019s actually <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-weigh-in-video\/380777\/ufc-vegas-109-weigh-ins-disaster-three-fighters-miss-weight-anthony-hernandez-succeeds-on-second-try\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">missed weight three times<\/a> in nine bantamweight fights, once by three whole pounds. She\u2019ll have to make championship weight of 135 on the nose with no pound allowance if she wants to step in should something happen to Kayla or Amanda. Let\u2019s hope she doesn\u2019t mess it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No matter what happens in the coming weeks, someone is gonna fight for the UFC women\u2019s bantamweight title&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-945200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}