Germaine de Randamie will look to become Europe’s latest UFC champion when she takes on Holly Holm for the UFC’s first ever women’s featherweight championship at UFC 208 in Brooklyn on Saturday night.

The Dutchwoman faces Holly Holm in the main event, who herself is looking to make a little bit of history be becoming the newest entrant in the UFC’s exclusive two-division champion club. Holm’s place in UFC history is cemented by the fact that she became the organisation’s second ever women’s bantamweight champion but, more perhaps more memorably, she became the first fighter to expose a chink in the armour of Ronda Rousey.

Despite Holm’s accomplishments in MMA and professional boxing, where she was defeated just twice in 38 contests, de Randamie isn’t feeling overawed by the occasion.

After all she once fought and knocked out a male boxer early in her career.

“Every fight is the toughest fight of my career. I respect Holly. She’s a tremendous athlete”, de Randamie said to assembled media during her open workout in New York on Thursday.

“To me it’s such an honor. But I’m ready. If I fought men, I can fight Holly.”

“[He had] 40 pounds [on me]. It was pro boxing, it is what it is. They offered me the fight, he had three pro fights, it was for TV and I’m like, let’s do it. He hit me hard. The first thing I thought when I hit him was damn, better keep my hand up. But he went down, I knocked him out.”

A clash between two of the most credentialed stand-up artists in the UFC promises fireworks but de Randamie says she is ready for Holm to attempt to take the fight to the canvas.

“I don’t expect her to stand and trade,” de Randamie said. “I don’t think that’s her style of fighting. I hope she does. Look at these amazing people, they want to see us bang it out in the middle of that cage. So let’s do it. Let’s bang it out.

“I don’t think she will do that, but what I do believe is it’s going to be an amazing fight, and like Mike Tyson said, ‘everybody has a plan, until they get hit in the face.’”