Nunes: It’s Up To The Dana, I’ll Fight Both

Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports

Two women’s featherweight contenders walked out of UFC Norfolk on Saturday night. Champ Amanda Nunes is ready to fight both of them.

The UFC’s minimally developed women’s featherweight division had a big night on Saturday at UFC Norfolk with four fighters competing for the chance to face off against double champ Amanda Nunes in Sao Paulo, Brazil on May 9th at UFC 250. The promotion had announced that Nunes would defend her 145 pound belt for the first time since taking it off Cris Cyborg at the end of 2018. Now all they needed was a contender.

Now they have two.

Megan Anderson made her case earlier on in the night with an impressive knockout of Norma Dumont at 3:31 of the first round, putting a straight right on the chin of Dumont and dropping her like a sack of potatoes. And then in the co-main event of the evening, Canadian Felicia Spencer bounced back from a gutsy but ultimately futile decision loss to Cris Cyborg back at UFC 240 to absolutely dominate Zarah Fairn on the ground, dropping a series of elbows that forced her own first round stoppage six seconds later than Anderson, at 3:37 of round one.

Following the event, Nunes weighed in with her thoughts on the two women and made it clear that she’d be happy to face either one.

”I like both winners tonight,” she wrote on Twitter. “Now it’s up to the Dana White. I’m ready for either.”

There was no tipping of the scale one way or another from the Dana White after fight night, other than Megan Anderson getting a $50,000 performance bonus. But Felicia Spencer holds a win over Megan Anderson and sat higher up on the card, so we’d have to imagine she’d have first dibs. Of course, business concerns tend to control things as much as athletic worthiness these days so we imagine the UFC will happily choose Anderson instead should Spencer demand a pay bump.

It’s hard to know whether Anderson or Spencer have much in the way of a chance against Nunes, who has established herself as the women’s GOAT over the past four years with a 12-1 UFC record. After a disappointing start in the UFC against Holly Holm, Megan Anderson is looking more like her ass-whupping Invicta self with this big first round KO, but coming against untested Norma Viana it doesn’t mean as much as if she’d taken out someone with more data points.

As for Felicia Spencer, her opponent Zarah Fairn was already exposed on the ground by Anderson in her last fight, and had nothing for Spencer from the millisecond the two began to topple to the canvas. Spencer looked raw on the feet to make me worry about a Nunes blowout, although she was throwing some nice kicks in the short time the fight was on the feet.

Not that they were anything Amanda Nunes hasn’t seen before. Spencer would have to get Nunes down (questionable) and outclass her with grappling (also questionable) if she hopes to win a showdown at UFC 250. She’d be a huge underdog just as she was the last time she went to Brazil to fight Cyborg.

You go into a women’s featherweight title fight with the contenders you have, and while both Spencer and Anderson are looking pretty good, it’s clear the best 145 pounders still have a way to go before they’re up on Nunes’ level.

What do you think, Maniacs? Who would you prefer to see Amanda Nunes stomp in Sao Paulo?