Miesha Tate believes Julianna Pena has the ability to dethrone Amanda Nunes at UFC 269

Miesha Tate believes that Julianna Pena has the ability to dethrone UFC women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes when they meet at UFC 269.

Tate coached Pena during her winning season on The Ultimate Fighter, and in the years since then, Pena has become one of the top women’s bantamweights in the UFC. Next month at UFC 269, Pena takes on Nunes for the 135lbs title. Speaking to the media ahead of her own fight this weekend against Ketlen Vieira at UFC Vegas 43, Tate was asked to size up Pena’s chances of defeating Nunes next month, and she thinks there is a good chance.

“Yes, of course I like it (Peña’s chances against Amanda). Amanda is a tough fight for anyone. She’s the Mount Everest of the division, she’s the one that everybody’s like: ‘Can I do (beat her)?’ But I think if anyone in the division can do that (beat Amanda) right now it’s Juli (Julianna Peña). She definitely has the best chance. I trained with her, she is very tough, she doesn’t give up. And she has the ability to put this fight in places where we haven’t really seen Amanda get tested in years. We’ve seen what she can do to people who try to stand up with her. We haven’t seen, lately, what she’s going to do when someone tests her on the ground,” Tate said (Via AG Fight).

“And Juli has the cardio to do that, she has the motivation to do that, she has the tenacity. She has everything she needs to put Amanda in uncomfortable positions. And there’s another thing, I think when you’ve been champion for a really long time and you’ve barely missed a second of a fight, what happens when you’re under someone you didn’t think you’d be, for a few minutes or a round? What happens in that frame of mind? Those are the intangibles that people are probably not taking into account and that I take for granted when I see someone like Juli fighting someone like Amanda,”

Do you agree with Miesha Tate that Julianna Pena has a good chance to beat Amanda Nunes at UFC 269?