The Curious Career of Nicco Montaño
Inaugural flyweight titleholder has made just two appearances inside the Octagon in one of the strangest careers in UFC history.
Last week, Nicco Montaño withdrew from her scheduled bout with Karol Rosa next week and it got me thinking: has anyone had a stranger UFC career than the 32-year-old Montaño?
Here’s the bullet-point version of her road to the Octagon and what has transpired since:
selected to participate on Season 26 of The Ultimate Fighter, where the winner of the 16-woman tournament will be crowned the inaugural UFC flyweight champion
enters as the No. 14 seed and is paired off with No. 3 seed Lauren Murphy in the opening round; wins the fight by unanimous decision after two rounds.
faces No. 6 seed Montana De La Rosa (nee Stewart) in the quarterfinals; wins the fight by unanimous decision after two rounds.
faces No. 2 seed and former Invicta FC flyweight champ Barb Honchak in the semifinals; wins the fight by unanimous decision after three rounds.
December 1, 2017: faces No. 1 seed Roxanne Modafferi in the finals on 24-hours notice after her original opponent, No. 12 seed Sijara Eubanks, was forced out due to weight-cutting complications; wins the fight by unanimous decision after five rounds to claim UFC gold.
September 7, 2018: scheduled to face No. 1 contender Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 228, but has her own weight-cutting issues and is forced to withdraw.
stripped of the UFC flyweight title.
November 15, 2018: suspended six months by USADA following a positive test for ostarine.
July 13, 2019: makes her post-TUF debut, competing at bantamweight, losing to Julianna Pena by unanimous decision.
February 15, 2020: scheduled to face Macy Chiasson, but is forced to withdraw.
August 8, 2020: scheduled to face Julia Avila, but bout is rescheduled after her coach tests positive for COVID-19.
September 5, 2020: tests positive for COVID-19, prompting another rescheduling.
October 4, 2020: withdraws from bout due to travel restrictions.
February 6, 2021: scheduled to face Karol Rosa, but forced to withdraw due to lingering issues from a car accident she was involved in last year.
Some segments of the Internet like to clown on Montaño for her inactivity, and news of her latest fight cancellation was met with the same string of mocking replays of her Modelo “Fighting Spirit” ad and general snickering, but personally, I just see a giant “What If?” and can’t really fathom how difficult the last four years and change have been for Montano.
Let’s get something clear right here, right now: anyone that thinks she doesn’t want to fight and is actively avoiding competition is insane.
No one is dealing with this many cancellations, the myriad injuries, multiple camps switches, and seemingly constant heartache that comes with each setback just so they can “play the part” of being a UFC fighter. Montaño hasn’t constantly worked through these hurdles time and again in order to find a way to stay on the sidelines.
She’s a competitor and I’m certain that she wants to compete.
What makes her case so curious and compelling to me is truly one-of-a-kind arc of it all.
Montaño is the only fighter in UFC history whose only victory came in a championship fight; Bas Rutten went 2-0, winning the heavyweight title in his second bout, while Dave Menne won the middleweight title in his second successful foray into the Octagon before dropping his next four appearances.
Though she won the flyweight title in an unconventional way, she wasn’t the first to be crowned a champion in this fashion (Carla Esparza) and fought literally the toughest competition she could face each step of the way, including navigating the last-minute opponent change heading into her championship opportunity.
There is no way to say how things would have shaken out for her had she remained healthy and active and eligible to compete this whole time, but she just straight up lost the bulk of her athletic prime to injuries and illnesses, medical issues and suspensions.
And those that want to point to her record heading into The Ultimate Fighter as an indication that Montaño “wasn’t all that good to begin with” — she was five fights and less than 14 months into her professional career, and lost to solid competition. How many other fighters — men and women — have we seen struggle initially, then grow into themselves, develop their skills, and become perennial contenders?
People lose fights, especially early in their careers when they’re just figuring things out, so to use that as a demerit against Montaño seems foolish at best, and purposely biased at worst.
Now I have no idea when or if Montaño will be able to return to action, nor can I forecast what the rest of her career will look like going forward, but to me, all of this makes her run to championship gold via The Ultimate Fighter even more incredible and such a unique story.
Yes, the nature of the show — fighting multiple times in a condensed period, not your regular coaches, away from family and friends, etc. — can have an impact on the way individuals perform while they’re sequestered in Las Vegas, and we’ve seen plenty of competitors that didn’t necessarily perform well on the show go on to have successful careers in the UFC and elsewhere, but all of that only makes actually going through and winning the damn thing even more impressive to me.
Add in that she faced and beat the highest-seeded opponent she could possibly face in each round, including the last-minute switch to Modafferi prior to the championship bout on December 1, 2017, and it’s even crazier.
There have been other underdogs and Cinderella stories that have emerged over the show’s 28 domestic seasons, including Kelvin Gastelum being the penultimate pick on his season before winning the whole thing, but the vast majority of seasons saw competitors selected before the final three rounds of picks emerging victorious, and matchups that weren’t determined by seeding.
Montaño’s run was some Loyola University (Chicago) winning the South Region in the 2018 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament (read: March Madness) type deal, but even then, the Ramblers were the 11 seed and navigated a region where the none of the top four seeds made the semifinals.
How all of this makes her an object of ridicule and mockery is beyond me, because personally, I think her’s is one of the most interesting stories in UFC history… and there are likely still more chapters to come.
I genuinely hope Montaño eventually gets cleared to compete again and can have her hand raised in the center of the Octagon at least once more, just so she can enjoy the euphoric feeling every fighter talks about constantly chasing one more time.
That being said — and again, I’m rooting for this not to happen — how wild would it be if her one and only UFC victory netted her a championship?
So while some will continue to snicker and sneer, regard her championship victory as a fluke, or dismiss her place in the history books entirely, I’ll be over here, continuing to track the curious career of Nicco Montaño, enjoying the oddity of it all and hoping she eventually makes a healthy return to the Octagon.