UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship
C | Amanda Nunes (18-4) vs. #1 WBW | Germaine de Randamie (9-3)Advertisement
Suddenly, Nunes might have nothing left to prove. For the first few years of her career, Nunes had some clear strengths and weaknesses. She was—and remains—a powerhouse on par with anyone in her division, but things got dicey when opponents could survive and take her into deeper waters. However, Nunes still had a surprising amount of success for all her flaws at the time. It feels like she struggled more, perhaps since her 2014 loss to Cat Zingano was such an outstanding comeback and her 2016 fight against Valentina Shevchenko was a near-defeat. With that said, the Zingano fight remains the only blemish on her record inside the Octagon. “Lioness” enjoyed a breakthrough year in 2016 after the Shevchenko win, obliterating Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey in a combined four minutes to establish herself as the queen of the bantamweights, but even then, the story was more about the opponents she defeated, given that Tate and Rousey were both retired by the end of the year. For her next two fights, Nunes still did not capture the greater imagination as an all-time great. A five-round rematch against Shevchenko was another near-loss due to a surprising amount of caution, and a prolonged beatdown of Raquel Pennington felt like the type of fight that Nunes typically would have finished much earlier. While Nunes was obviously in the top handful of female fighters in the world, she had yet to truly break out with the type of dynamic performances over top opponents that would get her into hypothetical pound-for-pound discussions. That has certainly changed over the past year. While Cristiane Justino took the worst possible approach to taking on the American Top Team star, the fact remains that Nunes went toe-to-toe with her countrywoman and sparked her in just 51 seconds to essentially take her crown as the all-time women’s MMA great; and while Holly Holm has her flaws, it was still stunning to see Nunes dispatch her without much issue for yet another first-round finish. Now that she has beaten her three predecessors as bantamweight champion in a combined eight minutes, what comes next? For now, it is a rematch of her 2013 win over de Randamie. Each fighter is much-improved since their first encounter.
It has certainly been a strange run for de Randamie since she came over from Strikeforce. A successful kickboxer, de Randamie’s background and long frame made her an interesting talent but never seemed destined to amount to much, as she was undercut by inactivity as much as anything. Her UFC debut was a controversial decision win over Julie Kedzie, and after getting run over by Nunes, “The Iron Lady” would consistently take a year off between fights. While she admittedly looked good in victories over Larissa Pacheco and Anna Elmose, the combination of long layoffs and poor competition did not exactly have her as a name on everyone’s lips. That changed in the most sudden way imaginable in 2017, when de Randamie was suddenly thrust into a pay-per-view main event against Holm for the UFC’s newly created women’s featherweight title. It looked to be some combination of the UFC trying to get Holm a relevant win as well as show that the promotion did not need Justino, but de Randamie wound up being the eventual benefactor. She secured the win in an impressive performance but immediately made it clear that she would be unwilling to face “Cyborg” due to the Brazilian’s history of PED use and some long-overdue hand surgery. De Randamie was eventually stripped of the belt due to inactivity and everyone moved on, but if nothing else, she was now established as enough of a name to get some prominent fights. She scored one-sided wins over Pennington and Aspen Ladd to earn her shot here.
De Randamie is probably the second-best female bantamweight in the world, but the bad news is that this still looks like a blowout. Their first fight is amusing to watch now simply because of how wild Nunes was as a fighter, but it still wound up as a one-sided win for the current champ, as she quickly got a clinch takedown and laid a beating on de Randamie on the ground. This rematch probably will not get quite that out of hand, as de Randamie has become a much better clinch fighter. The main shift is Nunes’ much more patient approach nowadays, but unfortunately, that probably just means this will be a frustrating war of attrition rather than some sort of back-and-forth battle. Nunes has already proven against “Cyborg” and Holm that she can take out fellow strong athletes with just one shot, but de Randamie is practiced enough that she probably will not give the champion the same defensive openings those two did. The expectation is that this looks something more like Nunes’ win over Pennington: Nunes stays in her lane and picks up when she can, while de Randamie does little but survive until the damage eventually starts to pile up. This was absolutely the best fight to make, but the pick is for Nunes to score a fifth-round stoppage in a middling affair.
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