Amanda Nunes News

Tom Taylor - June 10, 2018

Former UFC bantamweight champion Holly Holm was the picture of dominance in her UFC 225 main card featherweight battle with Megan Anderson, showing off a rarely seen but extremely impressive ground game en route to a lopsided unanimous decision win. With this victory, Holm effectively established herself as the number-one contender at both featherweight and bantamweight. She’s one of the only options available for featherweight champ Cris Cyborg, and one of the few top bantamweights left that bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes has not yet fought. It really seems to come down to which division she’d prefer to fight for the title in first.

Drake Riggs - May 28, 2018

Everyone has their eyes on a big super fight these days it seems. And UFC women’s featherweight champion, Cris Cyborg is no different. Cyborg is unbeaten in the UFC(5-0) and has racked up two title defenses since officially becoming the champion in July 2017 when she defeated Invicta FC bantamweight champion, Tonya Evinger.

Chris Taylor - May 13, 2018

Last night’s UFC 224 event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was headlined by a women’s bantamweight title fight featuring current champion Amanda Nunes taking on surging division contender Raquel Pennington. “The Lioness” was able to utilize some heavy low kicks throughout the course of the fight to soften up “Rocky”.

Chris Taylor - May 12, 2018

A women’s bantamweight title fight between champion Amanda Nunes and top contender Raquel Pennington headlined tonight’s UFC 224 event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Amanda Nunes utilized some nasty low kicks to batter the legs of her opponent early and often throughout the course of their championship bout.

Drake Riggs - March 21, 2018

UFC​ women’s bantamweight champion @Amanda_Leoa discusses her and @NinaAnsaroff’s future plans for their careers and family 👶🍼 pic.twitter.com/WlMqe6gVgr — MMA Fighting (@MMAFighting) March 21, 2018

Tom Taylor - March 21, 2018

UFC women’s bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes and top flyweight contender Valentina Shevchenko have previously engaged in two competitive scraps, with Nunes’ emerging the victor by a narrow margin on both occasions. While the grounds for a third fight would certainly seem to be there as a result, this is not something Nunes is interested in. “I don’t care about [Shevchenko],” Nunes told MMAJunkie this week. “She’s, like, only Valentina. She’s going to talk about me. I’m the best, you know? That’s why she talks about me.”

Drake Riggs - March 20, 2018

Tecia Torres: “Well here in Brazil…we’re friends so we’re gonna be friends but when it comes down to the fight in May, business is business. Amanda [Nunes] is the champion for a reason. She deserves to be there but in this sport we all want that same spot so we have to fight for it and Raquel [Pennington] is going in there to fight for it. At the end of the day, business is business. Outside that, we’re friends and there’s no reason to be rivals.”

Justin Golightly - March 15, 2018

The superfight has been put on hold, Cris Cyborg eradicated her last foe, and Amanda Nunes has a title defense at UFC 224. Both women are down to meet up after their business is finished, but now Cyborg thinks Nunes isn’t actually going to end up showing her face in the Octagon and has just been asking for the fight to promote herself. If Nunes doesn’t fight Cyborg at UFC 226, then she says that the UFC bantamweight champ will have to get to the back of the line of featherweight. We’d tell you who that would be behind, but the division still doesn’t exist on the UFC website. “I’m starting to think that Amanda Nunes just started using my name to negotiate a new deal with the UFC. Like many other girls, she’s using my name to create her brand. If Amanda is not ready to fight at UFC 226 in Las Vegas, I have to tell my team that I want to fight whoever is ready. I explained to my manager that if Amanda wins in Rio and refuses to fight in July, I will not invest my time trying to carry out this fight.”

Justin Golightly - March 8, 2018

While this fight has been penciled in for awhile now, the UFC has been wishy-washy about etching it in stone. As of today though, the UFC officially confirmed that Amanda Nunes will put her women’s bantamweight title on the line against Raquel Pennington. Nunes is currently rising a six-fight win streak against absurd competition, beating Miesha Tate, Ronda Rousey, and Valentina Shevchenko twice. While she’s been out for two years, Pennington is still rising a four-win run of her own. Amanda Nunes vs. Raquel Pennington finally official for UFC 224 in Brazil. Long time coming, UFC originally targeted this as far back as December. Latest date first reported by @DamonMartin. Interesting title fight.

Justin Golightly - February 10, 2018

With all the switch-ups and fight announcements, it’s hard to keep up. The UFC is scrambling to add to cards and take from others in order to fill in for all of the changes resulting from the chaos. Amanda Nunes and Cris Cyborg seemed all but official as a superfight, that was until the UFC needed a main event title fight for UFC 222 after Max Holloway had to pull out. Due to the booking of Cyborg and Yana Kunitskaya, Combate is now reporting that Amanda Nunes will fight Raquel Pennington in defense of her UFC women’s bantamweight title at UFC 224 in Brazil. Jesus, I just want announced my fight. 😫

Drake Riggs - February 7, 2018

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of the possible bantamweight title fight matchup between Raquel Pennington and the champion, Amanda Nunes. In fact, the fight was apparently on it’s way to getting finalized for UFC 219 at the end of 2017 but before the bout agreements could be signed, Pennington got into a nasty car crash that obviously put her first career title shot on hold. Pennington has since stated that a May return would be most likely for her. Damon Martin reports that the discussions have fired back up to get this 135-pound title fight back in place.

Justin Golightly - January 31, 2018

Somewhere someone is looking at numbers skyrocket. The engagements and impressions are out of control. Suddenly, a dull UFC week is sparked with an army of 14,000 fire emoji. This is what happens when the UFC announces a fight the magnitude of Daniel Cormier moving up to face Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title. A tweet like that holds its own gravitational pull. It drags in thousands who release their own satellites out to orbit around the news. People message friends, they send out hyperlinks and quote RTs. The drop of the information is like an event in and of itself. However, not every match-up is like this. Most entire cards aren’t like this. Nowadays, it takes an adrenaline shot to remind fans that MMA is still exciting as hell. Is this the way the UFC stays alive?  Before the ginormous sale, the UFC ramped up their fight cards like the climax of a Michael Bay movie. This all culminated in their pay-per-view draw poster boy fighting Eddie Alvarez in unprecedented champion versus champion main event at UFC 205. Since then however, things have dwindled. Conor McGregor is gone along with other marquee names like Ronda Rousey and Jon Jones.

Justin Golightly - January 24, 2018

It looks like the first superfight of 2018 has finally gotten close to becoming official. Dana White said it was the fight to make. Amanda Nunes has wanted it for some time in her quest to become a two-weight champion. Cris Cyborg has said she agreed with her management for it to happen. So, it seems like UFC featherweight champion will attempt to defend her belt against UFC bantamweight title holder Amanda Nunes. Reluctant to accept at first, Cyborg recently has gone on record saying she thinks Nunes needs this fight for money and to increase her fame. “Amanda [Nunes] fought Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate with big pay-per-view numbers. The reality though is that the UFC promoted her opponents more than her, and after having to fight on her own brand she struggled to sell 100,000 pay-per-views against [Valentina] Shevchenko. Amanda knows my name sells pay-per-views and without it her brand isn’t strong enough to sell enough pay-per-views to reach her bonus incentives in her contract.”

Drake Riggs - January 22, 2018

It appears that the UFC Featherweight champion, Cris Cyborg has changed her mind! Originally, she was stating that for her next fight she would like to defend against a fighter that has been competing and winning at Featherweight lately. She has now said that she is ready for the UFC Bantamweight champion, Amanda Nunes next rather than waiting until after the title defense against a Featherweight that she was asking for. I have agreed with my management to fight @Amanda_Leoa #ufc226 July 7th in Las Vegas during international fight week. I will let her finalize her side of the bout now. pic.twitter.com/w5YIYYRGV5

Tom Taylor - January 18, 2018

Over the last few weeks, there has been ample discussion surrounding a potential superfight between UFC women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg and UFC women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes. UFC President Dana White has assured this is the fight he wants next for both women.

Drake Riggs - January 11, 2018

It was announced by Invicta FC on their official website today that the UFC’s Bantamweight champion, Amanda Nunes would be re-joining their organization! But this time, not as a fighter but as part of the Athlete Development Team. Nunes’ primary responsibilities will be to assist in making matchmaking decisions, therefore leading to intriguing fight card layouts and helping identify future champions, specifically looking at talent from Brazil and the southeastern U.S. Nunes fought twice for Invicta, once in 2012 and once in 2013. She went 1-1, defeating Raquel Pa’aluhi and losing a decision to Sarah D’Alelio. She spoke a bit about Invicta and her new position in this interview:

Drake Riggs - January 8, 2018

Nothing is set in stone regarding the UFC’s current Featherweight division. Matter of fact, there has yet to be a UFC Featherweight fight between two fighters that haven’t fought below 140 lbs. There have been three Featherweight fights so far in the UFC. Starting things off with UFC 208, where the inaugural champion was crowned when Germaine De Randamie defeated Holly Holm via unanimous decision. Both fighters were previously Bantamweight contenders before that fight. The second fight was for the vacant title after De Randamie gave up the title making it Cris Cyborg vs Tonya Evinger. Evinger was coming over as the Invicta FC Bantamweight champion, filling in for Invicta’s Featherweight champion, Megan Anderson. And most recently, Cyborg defended her title against Holly Holm at UFC 219. In an effort to break this trend, the champion, Cyborg wants to fight a fighter with a recent win at 145 lbs for her next title defense. Then she will be open to a super fight with the Bantamweight champion, Amanda Nunes who is clamoring for the fight as are the fans. Cyborg had this to say on Twitter in response to Nunes’ coach at American Top Team, Conan Silveira when he said he thinks Nunes vs Cyborg will “1000% happen”.

Drake Riggs - January 8, 2018

UFC 219 left us with two big questions. Those being, “who’s next for Cris Cyborg?” and “who’s next for Khabib Nurmagomedov?”. These are both questions we have yet to get answers too. But…we appear to be getting closer to the answer for Cyborg more than we are for Khabib. The reigning UFC Featherweight champion, Cyborg has called for a fight with top 3 Featherweight, Megan Anderson since her win over Holly Holm at UFC 219. That fight, however, isn’t possible just yet as Anderson has yet to be cleared to compete. The second name that was brought up was current Bantamweight champion, Amanda Nunes who is all for the fight. She isn’t the only one though, UFC president, Dana White also voiced that that’s the fight he would like to make next and today, American Top Team head coach and coach of Nunes gave his take on the fight when he spoke with MMAJunkie: “People want to see it, I think they have the best opportunity to leave their marks on history. I believe for the weight division, Amanda is going to be extremely well-prepared,” he said. “She’s not going to have to make the weight. She’s probably going to be strong in that division. I do believe the compensation (for) the strength that comes from Cyborg definitely will be the tools that Amanda has on her side. I think it’s the perfect fight. It’s a perfect match. It’s a champions fight – it’s something we don’t see happen often.