No one was more critical of Miranda Maverick‘s performance at UFC Tampa than Maverick herself. In the post-fight presser, the unranked flyweight contender would call it the “worst performance” of her career. To be fair, the Maverick dominated the first and the third rounds, both outstriking and dominating Jamie Lyn-Horth on the ground in the grappling-heavy bout.

But clearly, she wasn’t really happy with the sloppiness and lack of much action in the fight, which makes one think how she would have done against her originally slated UFC Tampa opponent. After all, the unranked 125-pounder was set to face #11 ranked women’s flyweight Tracy Cortez in Tampa, but the latter pulled out, reportedly due to injuries. This was the second time Cortez had pulled out of fighting Maverick, as they were also set to fight in July, but the fight fell through. And Maverick, along with being upset at her UFC Tampa performance was also pretty salty about Cortez not showing up for the second time.

“It’s two times she’s had to fight me now. We gave it an 80% chance she’d drop out this time. What happened? She dropped out. And somehow, magically four days later she’s ready to fight again. Weird,” Maverick said, clearly alleging Cortez was dodging her. But Cortez predictably, disagreed and laid out the reasons she thought Maverick was wrong in an X post. “since we are pointing out the “obvious” our first schedule fight I was offered someone better, srry not srry! I took the opportunity! for this 2nd one, I need surgery, I don’t care what you think or the world but cancer runs in my family so I didn’t hesitate to get the masses removed!” Cortez wrote.

Cortez had gone through surgery three weeks ago to have some benign mass removed from her body as a precaution. After all, if she has a family history of cancer, that means she would have a higher chance of getting diagnosed with the said disease. It seems she wasn’t able to recover completely, which might have led to the injuries that reportedly made her pull out of UFC Tampa.

Someone could make an argument that Cortez knew she was going to fight and could have gotten the surgery (which was most probably an elective one) later. But no one would bat an eye at the reason she didn’t fight Maverick in their first scheduled fight.

Why did Tracy Cortez pull out of her first fight with Amanda Maverick?

There is good reason for Tracy Cortez to have pulled out of her fight with Miranda Maverick the first time around in July 2024. After all, the UFC needed an opponent for superstar and former women’s strawweight champion Rose Namajunas on short notice, which was one week before her scheduled clash with Maverick. Cortez took a fight against a higher-ranked and tougher opponent, with the opportunity to significantly advance in the rankings if she won. 

In the end, things didn’t work out for Cortez, who got her first UFC loss at the hands of the former champ at their Fight Night Clash. It is also understandable for Maverick to be a bit upset at Cortez pulling out repeatedly. After all, she had to fight two unranked opponents instead of the #11-ranked Cortez, who is a veritable star.

But Maverick has said that she has ‘moved on’ from the Arizona native and is now targeting a fight against the legendary Jessica Andrade, who is one of her idols. “We’re both like built the same, we’re both the, like, muscular, stocky girls in the division,” the unranked American told reporters. What do you think about Cortez’s reply to Maverick?