After a year and a half away from the Octagon, the first-ever UFC female featherweight champion is now officially back and set to do battle.

The Netherlands’ greatest female striker Germaine De Randamie essentially vanished from MMA after her big title win over Holly Holm at UFC 208 to continue pursuing her career as a police officer.

She is now set to return and will do so in her original home of the bantamweight division as the UFC announced today that she takes on the recent title challenger, Raquel Pennington at UFC Denver on November 10th.

Never losing her title, De Randamie was instead stripped of it for refusing to face the now champion Cris “Cyborg” Justino due to her past with performance-enhancing drugs. That along with needing to recover from a hand injury and having her eyes on returning to 135 regardless all put the UFC in an obvious position to take the title away.

But now she is back and set to take on a formidable foe in “Rocky” Pennington.

Prior to her title challenge loss at UFC 224, Pennington was riding the second best winning streak in the division outside of the champion Amanda Nunes.

Now looking to rebound and earn her second career win over a former UFC champion, this matchup is guaranteed fireworks.

Also added to UFC Denver was a strawweight matchup between The Ultimate Fighter season 23 alums Amanda Bobby Cooper and Ashley Yoder. Both fighters are coming off of losses to Mackenzie Dern.

As for the rest of the UFC Denver card so far, it currently looks as follows:

Featherweight – 145lbs: Frankie Edgar vs. Chan Sung Jung

Welterweight – 170lbs: Donald Cerrone vs. Mike Perry

Flyweight – 125lbs: Joseph Benavidez vs. Ray Borg

Strawweight – 115lbs: Maycee Barber vs. Maia Stevenson

 

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 8/9/2018