The UFC has moved the women’s bantamweight fight between Jacqueline Cavalcanti and Michelle Montague off its Qatar card and onto UFC 335, set for December 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Dione Barbosa first reported the switch, and Marcel Dorff confirmed it.
That’s a decent landing spot. UFC 335 is the last card of the promotion’s 2026 calendar, and after it the UFC goes dark until a Fight Night in Dallas on January 16. Charles Oliveira defends the “BMF” belt against Diego Lopes in the main event, and Alex Pereira makes his second heavyweight appearance against Sergei Pavlovich in the co-main. The undercard already had Brandon Moreno vs. Charles Johnson, Maycee Barber vs. Carli Judice and Chris Padilla vs. Chase Hooper, among others. Cavalcanti and Montague now get to fight on a pay-per-view people will actually be watching in a month when UFC 334 at Madison Square Garden is soaking up most of the attention.
Cavalcanti, 29, came over as a former LFA bantamweight champion riding a three-fight win streak and opened her UFC run with a unanimous decision over Zarah Fairn in 2023. Then came two split decisions in a row, over Josiane Nunes and Nora Cornolle, followed by a win over Julia Avila and a victory over former title challenger Mayra Bueno Silva to close out 2025. Five UFC fights, five wins. The streak ended this year against Ketlen Vieira, who handed Cavalcanti her first UFC loss in May and then, strangely, left the promotion shortly afterward. So Cavalcanti lost to someone who isn’t even on the roster anymore, which is a weird spot for a contender to be in.
Montague, 32, is a New Zealander who went pro with the PFL in 2022 after a long amateur career and submitted Olivia Parker in under four minutes of Round 1. She added a submission in a one-off with iKON FC, went back to the PFL in 2023 for two more wins, and ran her streak of rear naked choke finishes to six fights before signing with the UFC last year. Since then she’s 2-0 on decisions, beating Luana Carolina at UFC Perth and Bueno Silva in April. She’s 8-0.
The stat I keep coming back to is Bueno Silva, because both women beat her by decision and that’s about as clean a common opponent as you get at 135. It tells me the gap between these two is smaller than Cavalcanti’s longer UFC record suggests. Cavalcanti needed the judges to split twice in her best run, and she’s coming off a loss. Montague’s choke machine has stalled into decisions against UFC competition, which is a real knock, but she’s still winning. If the books hang Cavalcanti as a comfortable favorite because she has more octagon fights on her ledger, I’ll be looking hard at the undefeated side on December 12.
