White: Gender Bias In Play With Nunes
UFC president Dana White believes bantamweight and featherweight champion Amanda Nunes doesn’t get the respect she deserves because she’s a woman.
Nunes is widely recognized as the greatest female fighter of all time and that was further solidified after she defended her 145-pound title for the first time against Felicia Spencer at UFC 250 this past weekend.
However, the Brazilian is rarely in the conversation for the overall GOAT of MMA regardless of gender. Some observers even feel if a male fighter had emulated Nunes’ achievements, they would be in that exact same conversation.
And for White, it all comes down to a gender bias.
“I think it’s because she’s a woman, to be honest with you,” White told TMZ recently. “First of all, let’s start here — most of these guys that cover the sport don’t know sh*t about the sport anyway. Half of these guys have never been in a fight in their life. Not even half — 99.9 percent of them have never been in a fight in their life and the 0.1 percent got beat up a few times. That’s about it.
”So I think that’s part of the reason, but it’s getting very hard now for people not to start respecting her, especially after this last performance [against Felicia Spencer]. And when she fought Germaine de Randamie, people were like, ‘oh, she looked awful human in that fight, she looked human.’ What? She fought the greatest female striker ever. She fought the greatest female striker ever and she won the fight. What do you guys want from this woman? And then this last fight against an unbelievably tough, durable Spencer. She put on an absolute clinic.”
Nunes is currently set to take some time off from the sport.
However, it will only be a matter of time until she’s back and ready to defend one of her titles again. The only question is who will get the next shot.
Who do you want to see Nunes face next? And do you think she’s disrespected in the GOAT conversations?