After the de facto trade which saw former flyweight king Demetrious Johnson move to One Championship in a swap for the undefeated One welterweight champion Ben Askren, many fans believed the move signaled the end of the UFC’s 125 pound division.
That feeling grew as a number of the UFC’s flyweight division announced their release or their impending move to the heavier bantamweight division in the weeks immediately following the Johnson-Askren move. The rumor of the flyweight division’s demise was further fueled after the UFC announced a superfight at 125 pounds between flyweight champion Henry Ceujdo and bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw. Dillashaw went on record after the announcement saying the UFC had “paid me a f*ck ton of money to kill the [flyweight] division."
The UFC had not officially addressed the future of the flyweight division until UFC President Dana White provided a rather non-committal response to the situation on the latest episode of the UFC Unfiltered podcast.
“T.J. Dillashaw didn’t do sh*t to the flyweight division,” White said. “The flyweight division just never took off, it never caught on. Even with a dominant champion like Demetrious, it just never caught on. People didn’t care. I battled for a long time, I tried to keep it alive and obviously, it’s still going on now. We still have fights going on in that division, but we’ll see what the future holds for it.”