Move over, Aljamain Sterling. You’re not the only champion mixed martial artist from Long Island in action this week.
Just three days before the UFC bantamweight champion puts his title on the line in Newark, N.J., Jillian DeCoursey makes the first defense of her Invicta FC atomweight crown in Denver.
For the UFC-or-nothing set, that championship makes DeCoursey the de facto North American champion at 105 pounds, what with her weight class being the lone noteworthy division yet to be represented by any of the continent’s big three: UFC, Bellator and PFL.
And if DeCoursey’s nascent reign signals anything, it’s that the time to rectify that oversight has arrived. In the Glendale, Queens native, all-women promotion Invicta has a champion who defies the knock attributed to atomweights.
Too many decisions? The last two women to step into the cage with DeCoursey never made it to the first horn. The Long Island MMA and Fitness Center product brutally knocked out Lindsey VanZandt last May before tapping out champion Jessica Delboni via rear-naked choke in September in a combined 5 minutes, 50 seconds. That made it three finishes in her last four atomweight bouts.
As the 38-year-old prepares for Wednesday’s Invicta FC 53 (9 p.m. ET, AXS TV/YouTube) headliner against Rayanne Dos Santos, the champ only can speculate why her division remains the lone notable women’s weight class excluded from the big shows.
“I don’t know. I think they just hate on us little people, man,” DeCoursey told The Post in a recent Zoom conversation. “It really doesn’t make sense because some of the rationales they use like, ‘Oh, atomweight fights aren’t exciting, they’re too small,’ stuff like that … if you watch any atomweight fights, nine times out of 10, it’s super-fast paced, and they’re sometimes the most exciting fights on the card.”
Julie Kedzie, a women’s MMA pioneer who provides color commentary for Invicta FC broadcasts, pushed back on the premise that the atoms aren’t finishers, citing the many she’s witnessed in her decade with the promotion.
“In Invicta, there’s been some pretty damn good finishes and good knockouts,” Kedzie, a UFC and Strikeforce veteran, told The Post.
DeCoursey drew a parallel between women’s atomweight and men’s flyweight — a woefully under-promoted weight class that frequently provides high-octane action.
A recently-announced headliner for June 3 between Kai Kara-France and Amir Albazi will be the UFC’s first non-title men’s flyweight main event since 2017.
The UFC has steadily increased its offering of women’s weight classes since the popularity of Ronda Rousey forced UFC president Dana White’s hand to reverse course on his promotion putting on female fights.
Rousey helped usher in bantamweight in 2012, with strawweight added two years later, followed by featherweight and flyweight in 2017.
Bellator currently promotes featherweights and flyweights, while PFL has a featherweight season — which followed three years of lightweights, a division essentially created around Olympic star Kayla Harrison.
Invicta, founded in 2012, gave the vast majority of today’s female leads a platform to compete in the United States.
Before Amanda Nunes had constructed a GOAT-level career as dual UFC featherweight and bantamweight champion, she competed on some of the earliest Invicta events. Alexa Grasso, whose stunning submission victory over Valentina Shevchenko in March made her Mexico’s first woman to claim a UFC belt, was for years an Invicta strawweight before becoming a UFC champion flyweight.
As the bigger promotions with larger platforms and deeper pockets adopted more women’s weight classes, Invicta still features women from 115 pounds and up as more of a springboard to the UFC and such. That’s not the case for atomweights, who can either move on to compete among a deep talent pool in Asia — for promotions ONE Championship and Rizin — or be forced to face larger women at 115 pounds.
While conceding that age and muscle growth naturally make a move up in weight a smart decision, Kedzie hates to see undersized fighters forced to face larger women simply for the bigger platform the UFC provides.
“You see a lot of atomweights go to strawweight, and strawweight is the division that the UFC, they put that one up there,” Kedzie says. “And it’s an extraordinary division in the UFC. It’s filled with extraordinary fighters. And so we do see a lot of atomweights decide to go up in weight instead of staying at atomweight, which, I don’t know, that kind of makes me sad because I think it’s a really legit weight class that should be recognized.”
Until the UFC does adopt 105 within its octagon, the best on this side of the globe reside with Invicta.
And DeCoursey is proud to represent the promotion.
“For atomweights, Invicta is the top of the tier,” DeCoursey said. “And if you get to be the champion, you are on top of the food chain.”
White, who frequently bemoans the idea of adding more divisions to the UFC’s current 12 across two sexes, noted in late 2020 that he has “definitely kicked it around” when it comes to opening the doors to atomweights.
UFC star Michelle Waterson-Gomez, one of the earliest Invicta atomweight champions who moved up to 115 for the opportunity to fight on a bigger stage for larger purses, voiced her support for her former weight class arriving in the UFC ahead of her fight on the promotion’s Long Island event.
“If you build it, they will come,” said Waterson-Gomez, channeling “Field of Dreams” vibes. “The girls are out there, and they want a platform to show the world what they do. And there are tons of little feisty girls out there — including myself — that would love to get out there and scrap.”
Kedzie said of current ranked UFC strawweights she “can think of about four off the top of my head” whom she suspects could potentially make the drop down to compete at 105 if atomweights had a home with the promotion.
Back when the UFC added men’s flyweight, it created a mini four-man tournament: two standout UFC bantamweights and the recognized top champions from North America and Asia.
That led to the crowning of one of the greatest fighters of all-time: Demetrios Johnson. It led to plenty of frenetic, fantastic fights and finishes.
How about we see something like that for atoms one day, sooner or later?
Preferably, sooner.
