Man, what a weekend of fights we had. That card was set up with the intention of being able to talk about it for an entire month since there will only be one more card until early to mid January and it delivered. There's a lot of fallout posts I want to do and I'll be putting this one out first since I think it will be the shortest and it's already Monday afternoon. I'll get Oliveira vs Poirier out tomorrow and then maybe Sean O'Malley vs Raulian Paiva out Wednesday. I want to do previews for Daukaus vs Lewis and Thompson vs Muhammad, which obviously need to come out before the fight, so those will be Thursday and Friday. However, I do want to talk about some of the other fights from this weekend including Kai Kara-France vs Cody Garbrandt and Dominick Cruz vs Pedro Munhoz at the very least. I might do a combined post for some other guys like Josh Emmett, Tai Tuivasa, and Bruno Silva too. Those will come sometime next week and while those will be late, I would rather be late than not talk about those guys at all and not give them the shine they earned on Saturday. So without further ado, let's get into the main talking point coming out of Saturday's card.
At least for me, it is much easier to a be prisoner of then moment in MMA when compared to other sport and given the way things are talked about in general in MMA, I think most other people operate the same way. When we saw Julianna Pena submit Amanda Nunes on Saturday, that was one of the most shocking things I think I've seen in my sports life. In terms of upsets in UFC history, that is clearly in the top 5, probably in the top 3. Georges St. Pierre being knocked out by Matt Serra is often referenced as like the main shocking upset in UFC history. Unfortunately for me, I was just too young at the time to fully understand the circumstances as to why that was such a big deal. My earliest sports memories go back to about 2004. The Red Sox coming back from down 3-0 against the Yankees and the NFL draft that saw Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, and Ben Roethlisberger drafted in the first round are two of the earliest memories I have of professional sports. The GSP vs Serra fight happened in 2007 and while I was a little older then, MMA wasn't as much on my radar at the time. I knew about the UFC and I knew who GSP was and could recognize him if his face came across the TV, but I didn't know more than he was a UFC fighter. Obviously, since that time, MMA has become much higher on the list of things I think and talk about regularly and I have since retroactively learned the significance of the fight and I've seen it and to the best of my ability try to understand what happened that night. The problem is that will just never resonate with me the same way because I didn't experience it in real time. The other big upset in UFC history in my mind is Holly Holm defeating Ronda Rousey and this time I was a freshman in college and can very much remember that fight. I still wasn't as informed as I am now, but I like to think I at least understood what I was seeing for the most part. In reality, we all look back at that fight and aren't completely shocked that she lost because we can look back on it for what is was. We now know that it was a pretty standard striker vs grappler matchup where the striker was able to stuff all the takedown attempts and took advantage on the feet. However, at the time, Ronda wasn't viewed as just an ordinary grappler. It was much like the Khabib vs Gaethje fight or Khabib vs Poirier. If Khabib gets his takedowns stuffed and then gets knocked out in one of those fights or even just loses by decision because he got out boxed on the feet without being able to get takedowns, that's not really that surprising because if Khabib can't get his takedowns, we know he's vulnerable, but the mystique surrounding Khabib and Ronda didn't allow people to think like that because it seemed almost impossible for them not to impose their will on their opponents. I have no shame in saying that I was shocked that she lost because I'm just some random guy in the grand scheme of this sport. Joe Rogan is an informed analyst who has been training martial arts for years and he went on public record saying Ronda could compete with Floyd Mayweather. That's usually memed to clown on Joe and while it is a ridiculous thing to say, it's not like he was alone in that feeling, he just said it with a really big platform. To go along with that, the way Holly defeated Ronda made it that much more shocking. It wasn't a back and forth crazy 5 round battle that was a split decision. Ronda largely got beat up and then got kicked in the face and put out cold. Here was our consensus most dangerous woman who's ever competed in combat sports and she's laying flat on the ground unconscious and bloody. She was supposed to be untouchable and all of that was gone in just under 6 minutes of fighting. I've been going back and forth on whether this is bigger than that and I honestly don't have the answer to that. In an attempt to answer that, let's get into this fight more specifically.
I think everyone agrees that Amanda is a better fighter than Ronda was, even at her peak. Amanda is bigger, stronger, more physically imposing, and more well rounded. Amanda has legitimate skills on both the feet and on the ground. She uses her size advantage on the ground to control her opponents and has plenty good enough submission skills to finish fights. On the feet, it is a very similar story. She is a great boxer and has very good kicks with power that most women have just not been able to deal with. She knocked Cris Cyborg out cold in under a minute and TKO'd Holly Holm in the first round. I really didn't think I would ever see Amanda lose another fight, mostly because with the way things were going, it didn't seem like Amanda had plans on fighting for a whole lot longer. It seemed like Amanda had maybe another year or 3 at most before she just walked away. It seemed like everything was building to a fight with Kayla Harrison and that could have been it for her. Amanda's reign of dominance over two divisions in the UFC has been so long that I think some of her weaknesses were either forgotten, ignored, or the fans who started watching after it started didn't know about them. When I say weaknesses, I'm mainly referring to her cardio. We've seen this be an issue for Amanda in the past, but it's just been so long that I don't think anyone really thought too much about it. It hasn't been much of a problem for her of late just because she rarely is forced to go the distance or even get close to it. She went to decision against Valentina Shevchenko twice, but the last fight was 4 years ago. She went to decision against Germaine de Randamie, but she used her grappling to win that fight where she was on top largely controlling the pace and keeping her cardio in a safe spot. She went to a decision against Felicia Spencer, but she dominated that fight from start to finish and had Spencer in a place where she wasn't in any condition to try and force a pace on Amanda almost from the jump. Also, Felicia Spencer just announced her retirement, so best of luck to her with whatever she decides to do with the rest of her life. Now, Amanda didn't quite seem to be her normal self fully, but there's not excuses in this game and you won't catch me taking anything away from Julianna Pena. Amanda was met with some resistance for he first time in awhile and it looked like she was just surprised and didn't know how to deal with it. She was met with resistance with de Randamie, but there was an easy answer to that for her when she got it to the ground. Amanda didn't have that option because she got resisted on the feet, but taking it to the ground is right in Pena's wheelhouse and that left her stuck between a rock and a hard place. I could go on about Amanda, but it's only right to give Julianna Pena her shine.
I mean, what a performance right? Julianna has been calling for this fight for awhile and I think everyone sort of shrugged her off, but damn. She did it and did it in style. What's really crazy is that the first round went how everyone expected it to. Amanda had the power advantage and that showed. The leg kicks were powerful, she knocked Pena down (which I think was more knocking her off balance than actually dropping her, but regardless), and then controlled Pena on the ground, which had to be especially demoralizing. However, some how, Pena was able to get back to her corner, calm down, center herself, refocus, and go back out and get the stoppage in the second. I think that is why this one surprised me even more than the Holm vs Rousey fight. We saw Holly largely win almost every exchange in that entire fight until it ended. Pena clearly lost the first and then turned it around and ended it almost in the blink of an eye. What is even crazier still is that she turned the tide of the fight in the realm where everyone though Amanda had the advantage. It's not like she just took Amanda down and submitted her. That would still have been crazy and a huge upset, but the fact that she got the best of her on the feet first took it from crazy to almost an out of body experience for me. I was sitting in my living room with my family while they were trading shots and we were all laughing and going crazy because it was like we couldn't believe what we were watching. Simply put, Julianna Pena traded shots with Amanda Nunes and got the better of her. That's a crazy statement. Julianna was able to take this contest and turn it from an athletic competition under the unified rules into a fight. That's something I've mentioned before when talking about other fights, but this was a perfect example of how it can work in someone's favor. Amanda had the power, size, and experience in the striking over Julianna, but none of that mattered because it wasn't a clean striking battle. Julianna tried her best to remove all of the clean striking technique and turn it into a brawl where her will to win and cardio had a chance to take over and that's exactly what we saw. Obviously, all of that is great and it's a good strategy, but none of that matters if Pena gets flat lined by the first right hand she gets hit with. We've heard fighters say it before, but your ability to take a shot is largely determined by what kind of shape you're in coming into the fight. Clearly, Pena put in the work to be in great shape because she took the best of Amanda Nunes and continued firing her own shots back. She was consistently stinging Nunes in their exchanges and her right hands seemed to effect Amanda more. Eventually, she was able to hurt Nunes significantly, which caused her to back up against the cage and clinch. Pena got the takedown from there and quickly took her back and put the choke in. It didn't even seem like the choke was in tight, but Nunes quickly tapped out. It all happened so fast that there was some confusion in my living room as to exactly what had happened. It turns out that the hand she tapped with was blocked by the referee's leg on the initial angle, which didn't help matters. It seemed like Pena had similar confusion that she talked about at the press conference afterwards. Also, I just have to say, using the Nate Diaz quote with Joe Rogan afterwards was perfect. It was almost a surreal experience that I won't forget any time soon.
Normally, this is the part where I would discuss what's next for each, but we already know the rematch is coming. To have Pena fight someone else and risk losing the title before the rematch just isn't worth it from a business perspective in my opinion. Also, having Amanda defend her featherweight belt against Norma Dumont or whoever else would be really weird to me. Seeing a great champion lose their title after a long reign and then not trying to get it back would just be such a strange sight. However, there is an idea that I do want to convey. I use this quote all the time since he said it, but in an interview with Ariel Helwani after he fought Justin Gaethje, Michael Chandler said something to the extent of: at the end of the day, people don't remember the wins and losses, they remember how you made them feel. That's how I feel about Julianna Pena. I don't care if she goes on to hold the title for the next 10 years or if she gets knocked out in 3 seconds with a showtime kick. She will always be a UFC champion and she gave all of us that moment to remember where we were and how we felt. That to me is why I love this sport. It's easy to get caught up in the match making, judging decisions, and politics of it all, but that's what keeps bringing us all back. Julianna got her moment and she should enjoy every bit of it. Nothing with how the future plays out can or will take it away from her either.
What a fight. What a night overall. Lot's more to come from me on the rest of it. What do you guys think? Do you think Amanda can make the adjustments? Can Julianna Pena follow this up with another great performance? What was your reaction to watching this fight in real time? Leave any comments, thoughts, and stories below. Really want to hear from you guys. Thanks for reading and come back tomorrow for the Oliveira vs Poirier fallout post.
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