The Bottom Line: Loose Ends

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It feels odd to note, but the Julianna Pena-Amanda Nunes bantamweight title tilt on Saturday in Dallas will be the first women’s bout to headline an Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-view in over two years. It’s a good choice to play that role, too. It’s low key one of the most compelling rematches in women’s MMA history.

Pena-Nunes I wasn’t some sort of legendary encounter that you just can’t wait to see again, like Zhang Weili-Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Pena didn’t look good in the first round, and Nunes didn’t look good in the second. What makes the rematch intriguing is instead the stakes involved. Nunes’ six unbeaten years from 2015 to 2021 constituted far and away the most impressive run any female MMA fighter has ever enjoyed. Pena ended that. If Pena isn’t able to win again, it will undo some of the relevance of the original win. If Nunes can’t win the rematch, it will end her status as the queen of MMA.

Unfortunately, many of the women’s bouts that most called for rematches never saw those rematches come to fruition. Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino-Gina Carano captured more fan excitement than any women’s bout to that point and was exciting while it lasted, as well. Unfortunately, Carano went into acting and never fought again. Holly Holm’s knockout of Ronda Rousey was one of the biggest upsets in MMA history, and fans would have been hot to see if Rousey with a different game plan could have changed things in the rematch. Instead, Rousey’s next fight was a quick knockout loss to Nunes, and she left for the world of professional wrestling.

More recently, Nunes’ stunning 51 second knockout of “Cyborg” appeared to be a passing of the torch. Since then, Justino has gone 6-0 and demonstrated some of the best technique of her career, leaving open the question of what a fight between the two would look like were not “Cyborg” rocked in the opening seconds. The hope for that potential legacy-defining rematch remains unfulfilled. In each of these cases, the original result stands alone. Nunes will have the opportunity to add another data point to the conversation.

Nunes isn’t as wide of a favorite as she was for the first fight, but she remains a strong 3-1 favorite and it’s not hard to understand why. Not only does she have the much stronger overall resume, but the first Pena-Nunes bout was a strange one. Nunes looked like the better fighter in the first round. She landed hard leg kicks, dropped Pena with a straight right hand, got her back in a scramble and won the round on all three judges’ scorecards. For those picking Nunes to win, there wasn’t much in the first round to create doubt about that prognostication.

Then the second round arrived, which functioned as something of a Rorschach test when it came to Nunes’ performance. To many, it was the return of cardio problems that plagued Nunes earlier in her career. After spending a lot of energy in the first round, she started getting hit by shots that didn’t seem particularly crisp in their execution. Nunes herself noted that she had a subpar camp, rebounding from getting COVID-19 and hampered by knee injuries that prevented her from training properly.

Still, there was reason not to buy that it was a cardio issue. Nunes did not look weathered at the beginning of the round, and the decline in her performance came after she started eating some strong punches. Pena turning the tide with her strikes would likely be the dominant narrative watching the fight were it not for Nunes’ history of endurance issues. The ambiguity about what happened in that second round is a big part of the curiosity surrounding the second fight.

Regardless of the cause of what happened to Nunes in the second round, history suggests it might not matter. When a great MMA fighter goes on a streak of dominance, an aura of invincibility develops around them. When they finally lose, that illusion shatters and opponents approach them differently. Additional losses often follow in rapid succession.

Many were quick to write off Anderson Silva’s loss to Chris Weidman. Silva was clowning, he got caught and he’ll learn his lesson, the thinking went. He would lose six of his next eight bouts. Fedor Emelianenko made a mistake thinking Fabricio Werdum was rocked and dove into Werdum’s guard recklessly. Few made all that much of it. Emelianenko would get stopped in his next two appearances, though—the longest losing streak of his career. Some viewed Chuck Liddell’s knockout loss to Quinton Jackson at UFC 71 as a flash deal that was an outlier. He would lose five of his next six fights. Nunes going on a losing streak feels improbable right now, but there is a track record of the MMA world being surprised when a great fighter follows their first loss in ages with even more losses.

The UFC 277 main event is a potential pivot point for both fighters. The strong consequences built into the result either way make it stand out. Nunes’ legacy is secure, but her future is the big question.