Maybe if Michelle Waterson retained her title back in December, she would have re-signed with Invicta. Maybe not. But either way, losing the Invicta women's atomweight title caused her to re-evaluate her place in the sport.
"I feel like everything happens for a reason," Waterson told Ariel Helwani on Monday's edition of The MMA Hour. "Losing the belt gave me time to kind of think about my MMA career and what I really wanted to do in these next couple of years."
Waterson essentially made the choice to test the free-agent waters in January and had been in talks with the UFC since then before her signing was made official last week, as reported by Helwani on UFC Tonight.