It's fight week for the last UFC pay per view of the year. This year seemed to go by really fast on the pay per view schedule because almost all of them were great cards. The August pay per view with Lewis vs Gane wasn't great, but besides that, they all were highly anticipated and they mostly delivered on that anticipation. The co-main event on Saturday will feature the GOAT of women's MMA Amanda Nunes defending her bantamweight championship for the first time in almost 2 years. She's made a couple of featherweight title defenses in the mean time however. The challenger for this defense is Julianna Pena and quite a few people believe she has the best chance to beat Amanda Nunes out of non-Valentina Shevchenko challengers currently. While I think some might be overstating that a little, I don't think I disagree with the overall sentiment.
We'll start with the challenger Pena for this one. Pena first became well known in the mainstream when she won season 18 of the ultimate fighter and has had varying degrees of success since joining the UFC. She won her next 3 fights including wins over Jessica Eye and Cat Zingano before losing to Valentina Shevchenko. She's alternated wins and losses since, with her last performance being a submission victory of Sarah McMann at UFC 257 in January. I think unfortunately for Pena, the UFC is desperate to find someone to fight Nunes. This has led to too many fighters being rushed into a title fight before they are truly ready and that's my fear for Pena. She's only 2-2 in her last 4. She's lost to Germaine de Randamie and Shevchenko, while defeating McMann and Nicco Montano. While those are 2 legitimate losses and 2 solid wins, that doesn't really sound like the recent history that would get someone a title shot under traditional circumstances. All of this isn't to say that Pena isn't a good fighter or that she can't win on Saturday, but you would like to see someone have a little more momentum than alternating wins and losses for her last 4 and just being the highest ranked woman coming off a win. It might be obvious, but Pena doesn't have nearly the big fight experience that Nunes has, but that goes for almost everyone woman in MMA outside of Shevchenko, Ronda Rousey, and Cris Cyborg. On top of that, Pena isn't really that active in general. Pena is 32 years old and has only 14 career professional fights with a 10-4 record. You can add in the 3 exhibition fights from the ultimate fighter for a total of 17 with a 13-4 record. Her fight this Saturday will be her second fight this year and will be the first time Pena has fought twice in the same calendar year since 2015. She fought twice in 2013, but a significant knee injury caused her to miss all of 2014. She came back with 2 fights in 2015, but since has fought once a year since then except she did not appear at all in 2018. While I just spent how many sentences giving a bunch of reasons she won't win, she's not here on accident either. Pena is a very talented fighter and the media is hyping her for a reason. Those that are high on Pena believe she will be able to win the grappling exchanges with Nunes and that very well could be the case. Pena has good takedowns and a good submission game. Pena averages 2.49 takedowns per 15 minutes and lands them at a 53% success rate. That will be her path to victory in this one. She's solid on the feet and doesn't absorb hardly any strikes, only 1.70 per minute, but that is of course against women who aren't Amanda Nunes. Nunes will have both the technical striking advantage and a massive power advantage as she always does. Nunes put away Cyborg in 51 seconds on the feet, so I don't think I need to tell anyone that she's more than capable of dealing with Pena in the striking. Pena has legitimate high level skills that are capable of getting her the win, but she's going to have to be ready to have a performance of a lifetime to pull it off.
I took awhile to talk about Julianna Pena, but I don't foresee the Nunes section being nearly as long. There's just not much to say about Nunes that hasn't already been said. She is the best fighter in the history of women's MMA. Everyone else who is even in the conversation has been directly beaten by Nunes. She knocked out both Cyborg and Rousey in a combined 99 seconds. She's beaten Shevchenko twice, the second time in a controversial split decision. Nunes has the striking advantage big time here. She's the more technically sound, more powerful, more diverse, and more active. The key to her winning this fight will be taking advantage of the time there and keeping it standing for as long as she can. Nunes has over 80% takedown defense, so taking her down will be a challenge for Pena. Nunes has plenty of skills herself if it gets to the ground as well, so Pena can't recklessly go for submissions or she could end up being submitted herself. I could go through her resume and list all the wins and losses like I normally do, but I don't feel like that's even necessary for Nunes. I already mentioned Rousey, Cyborg, and the two against Valentina, so that's basically the best wins for her anyways. Let's get into some more matchup details.
I started doing this section in a little more detail for Font vs Aldo and I really enjoyed it so I think this is going to become a permanent part. I know I'm not a standard fight analyst, but I feel like I can at least offer the very basics and things to look for in how they matchup strategy wise. It's probably pretty clear by now, but the major key to this fight will be the takedowns for Pena. If Pena can get the fight to the ground, she has a chance. I don't know if she can submit Nunes because she's a very good ground fighter in her own right and has the same amount of submission wins in her career as Pena does, but we could see Pena grind out a decision with control time. I really think that's Pena's best and most clear path to victory. If the fight stays on the feet and especially at range for long stretches, it's really a matter of when, not if, Nunes can land powerful shots and do tremendous damage to Pena. Nunes is taller, but they have the same reach, so that's one thing Pena won't have to worry about. She needs to close the distance as quickly as possible and get into a clinch situation to start working towards a takedown. One aspect I haven't heard be talked about (not saying someone hasn't, I just haven't come across it personally) is the potential size difference. This can go both ways though. Nunes should be the bigger woman on Saturday, which would likely pose an additional problem for Pena when it comes to getting takedowns. However, the wrinkle is that unless she's been doing it to practice, Nunes hasn't cut that extra weight in awhile. Nunes hasn' fought at 135 lbs since December 2019, so cutting that extra weight being 2 years older than the last time she did it could pose a potential challenge for Nunes. I'm not saying it will be a problem, but even if she makes it, what will it take out of her? Amanda has the best trainers and nutritionists in the world, so I highly doubt she misses weight, but having not done it in so long, that could be an adjustment for her. If Pena can grind on Nunes and get into the later rounds after her first bigger weight cut since 2019, what's to say that she can't find herself the fresher fighter. I think that should be Pena's mindset at the very least. I don't think going into the fight planning on finishing Nunes early would be a good plan. Obviously, this is a tall task, but as a competitor, you have to grasp onto something that you believe to be your advantage and I think trying to push her into the later rounds and to test her cardio as an older fighter who hasn't cut to 135 in awhile would be a really good mindset to grasp onto to give yourself belief that she can actually upset Nunes. Even though my preview seemed pretty bleak, I really don't feel like Pena is hopeless. She has a legitimate skillset and can most definitely defeat Amanda Nunes on Saturday. However, as comes with any dominant champion in any division of any sport, you can't rely on them to fold or lose the fight. Pena has to go in to take it from her and will have to take some chances in order to get the positions she needs to in order to be successful. She'll have to walk through the fire so to speak and take some big shots. We'll see if she's up to the task on Saturday.
What do you guys think? Does Pena have a chance or is it all wishful thinking? Will Nunes finish it early or will she be pushed? What thoughts do you have on the fight as a whole? Leave your thoughts in the comments and thanks for reading.
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