Paige VanZant to appear in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition 2019

After a successful return to the Octagon in January 2019, Paige VanZant is now going to continue expanding her brand outside of the world of MMA as it was recently announced that she will be appearing in the 2019 issue of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.

In January at UFC Brooklyn, VanZant returned to take on the Invicta FC veteran and season 26 of The Ultimate Fighter contestant, Rachael Ostovich. VanZant would end up scoring the second-round armbar submission victory after a rather one-sided opening round in favor of her opponent.

VanZant’s most recent fight prior to taking on Ostovich came a whole year earlier when she went to St. Louis to face Australia’s, Jessica-Rose Clark. Unfortunately for VanZant, Clark would be the one to walk away with the unanimous decision win.

Even more unfortunate for VanZant would be that she would suffer a nasty arm break in the second round when landing a flush spinning back fist.

The 24-year old would have to undergo surgery to fix the break thus sidelining her for essentially all of 2018.

Hoping to keep injuries behind her, that isn’t the case for VanZant who has now fractured her arm once again following the Ostovich fight.

There were some rumblings that the flyweight prospect was to get right back into action at UFC 236 against either Poliana Botelho or Montana De La Rosa. However, after finding out about her arm break, all fight plans were obviously shut down.

As she still attempts to work her way up the rankings ladder at 125-pounds, VanZant has already become a fairly big star throughout her still very young career. Repeated setbacks, especially with a specific injury, are a bit worrisome though and hopefully, VanZant can get everything squared away going forward.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/7/2019