Cris Justino (top), shown during a Sept. 24 win over Lina Lansberg, won’t be part of it when the UFC debuts a women’s featherweight division on Feb. 11 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

This wouldn’t be happening if Cris “Cyborg” Justino were under a long-term contract to another promoter. And it wouldn’t be happening if Justino could either make the women’s bantamweight division’s limit of 135 pounds or would be content to fight in the UFC at catchweights of 140 pounds, as she has done twice previously.

It was, though, somewhat startling Tuesday to learn that though the UFC has finally created a women’s featherweight division, Justino won’t be involved in its first championship match.

Ex-women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm and Germaine de Randamie will meet on Feb. 11 at UFC 208 at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn for the women’s featherweight title. ESPN first reported the news Tuesday.

UFC president Dana White confirmed to Yahoo Sports on Tuesday that he created the division expressly for Justino and had offered her fights on three different dates.

He said she declined all of them. Justino wrote on Twitter that she simply asked to wait until March.

But Justino, who is the Invicta featherweight champion, will be sitting out in the debut of the division that fans and media long clamored for the UFC to make for her.

“The reality is, we’re doing this for her,” White said of Justino. “The timing is perfect, too, to add another weight class. This lady has been running around crying saying, ‘I can’t make 135 pounds, I can’t make 135,’ so we said, ‘OK, [expletive] it. Let’s bite the bullet and do it. We’ve had her fighting and she’s saying she can’t make the weight, so let’s do it.’ We made the division, we called her and offered her a title fight at 145 pounds, and she said, ‘Eight weeks isn’t enough time for me to make the weight.’

“[Matchmaker] Joe Silva was like, ‘If you can’t make 145 pounds in eight weeks, you’re still in the wrong weight class.’ And we aren’t starting a 155-pound [women’s] division, you know what I mean?”

It will be jarring, though, to see a women’s featherweight bout without the most feared female featherweight ever as part of it.

Justino has had plenty of ups and downs in her career, but most of those were outside the cage. She tested positive in 2011 for the anabolic steroid Stanozolol, which in addition to its strength-increasing properties is useful for cutting weight.

She’s fought twice in the UFC, both times at 140 pounds, and scored knockouts over Leslie Smith and Lina Lansberg. But she’s said both weight cuts were horrible and after the Lansberg fight, she documented her struggle to make it.

She said her health took a setback from that attempt and that she needs more time for her body to recover.

Justino has superstar potential in the UFC, but the company will move on without her if she isn’t able to make the featherweight limit safely enough and timely enough to fight at least three times a year.

That would be a tragedy because she’s so gifted and fans enjoy watching her, but she’s a physically large woman who sheds muscle to get down in weight.

Justino, who became an American citizen in Los Angeles earlier on Tuesday, tweeted, “ … I didn’t turn down 1 title fight I asked for a march date. 10 years no division and no respect.”

It’s not surprising, though, that the UFC added yet another division, bringing its total now to 11 when Holm and de Randamie inaugurate women’s featherweight on Feb. 11 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

White said the UFC is not at this point considering a women’s flyweight division.

Given the way the company is stacking championship fights on its major events, though, it’s increasingly clear it needs more divisions so it can promote more title fights.

View photos Germaine de Randamie will face Holly Holm for the first UFC women’s featherweight title on Feb. 11 at UFC 208 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. (Getty Images) More

The UFC was forced to cancel is planned Jan. 21 show in Anaheim, Calif., because it didn’t have a suitable main event when a knee injury left middleweight champ Michael Bisping unable to defend against No. 1 contender Yoel Romero.

Lightweight champion Conor McGregor and former women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey are the primary reasons why the UFC has had so many massive pay-per-view performances in the last two years.

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