Invicta FC 26’s co-main event just got a little shakeup.
The Invicta FC 26 co-main event has undergone a change. Per a release from Invicta FC posted to their official website on Monday, Japan’s Mizuki Inoue (going by just MIZUKI these days) is off the card. In her place steps Kinberly Novaes, who will take on Janaisa Morandin. The strawweight fight remains the penultimate fight of the evening.
No word was given on why Inoue (12–4) was forced off the event next month, though an injury seems likely. The Japanese fighter has not stepped in the cage in over a year, last appearing at Invicta FC 18 in July 2016. The twenty-three year old, who turned pro at 16, is 3-2 in Invicta overall, while also appearing in Deep. Inoue is currently on a four fight win streak.
Taking her place, as noted, will be Kinberly Novaes (9-3), making Invicta FC 26’s co-main event an all-Brazilian affair. Novaes, a former Pancrase title challenger, has had an interesting path to the big show. Back in 2015, it was discovered that she unknowingly fought a MMA fight in her native Brazil while pregnant. Months later, with an RFA fight lined up, difficult making weight forced her to seek medical attention. It was then she learned of the pregnancy. The RFA bout, obviously, was off, and Novaes took time off from the sport to have her son.
That 2015 bout she fought while several months pregnant? She actually won a title.
Since returning to action last year, Novaes is 1-1, defeating Bianca Sattelmayer in Aspera Fighting Championship in August 2016, then losing the aforementioned Pancrase title shot earlier this year. That loss came against current UFC strawweight Syuri Kondo.
Janaisa Morandin (9-1), meanwhile, is looking to get back in the win column after dropping her Invicta FC debut to Livia Renata Souza at Invicta FC 25 in August.
Invicta FC 26, headlined by a women’s flyweight title fight between Jennifer Maia and Agnieszka Niedźwiedź, takes place December 8 at the Scottish Rite Temple in Kansas City, MO.
