Tag: Amanda Nunes

UFC 213: Nunes vs. Shevchenko 2 Odds, Tickets, Predictions and Pre-Weigh-in Hype

Saturday just can’t come soon enough for many UFC fans as UFC 213’s fight card is full of exciting fights, particularly the co-main event between Yoel Romero vs. Robert Whittaker and the main event featuring bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes vs. Valen…

Saturday just can’t come soon enough for many UFC fans as UFC 213’s fight card is full of exciting fights, particularly the co-main event between Yoel Romero vs. Robert Whittaker and the main event featuring bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes vs. Valentina Shevchenko.  

It’s been a long and tumultuous road for Romero, the UFC’s No. 1 contender in the middleweight division, as he has been brushed aside for a title shot by champion Michael Bisping, who is currently recovering from a knee injury after a failed attempt to fight the returning Georges St-Pierre.

With the interim 185-pound title on the line Saturday night in Las Vegas, the “Soldier of God” will be looking to take out the fast-rising Kiwi, Whittaker, to set up a date with Bisping for the undisputed title.

As for Nunes, she is looking to defend her belt for the second time against Shevchenko after dismantling Ronda Rousey last December.

Shevchenko is looking for revenge after losing to Nunes in a three-round bout back in March 2016 in a fight where she began to takeover in the third round before it was too late. This time around, however, their fight is five rounds so things might shape up a little differently than before.

Here’s a look at the complete card with odds from OddsShark, ticket information and predictions for the co-main and main event at UFC 213. 

        

UFC 212 Fight Card and Odds


Main Card: PPV at 10:00 p.m. ET

  • Amanda Nunes -105 vs. Valentina Shevchenko +125
  • Yoel Romero +105 vs. Robert Whittaker -135
  • Daniel Omielanczuk +475 vs. Curtis Blaydes -750 
  • Fabricio Werdum EVEN vs. Alistair Overeem -130
  • Anthony Pettis -240 vs. Jim Miller +190

Prelims: Fox Sports 1 at 8:00 p.m. ET

  • Travis Browne -200 vs. Aleksei Oleinik +160
  • Chad Laprise -600 vs. Brian Camozzi +400
  • Thiago Santos -155 vs. Gerald Meerschaert +125
  • Jordan Mein +135 vs. Belal Muhammad -165

Early Prelims: UFC Fight Pass at 6:30 p.m. ET 

  • Rob Font -325 vs. Douglas Silva de Andrade +250
  • Cody Stamann -280 vs. Terrion Ware +220
  • Trevin Giles -305 vs. James Bochnovic +235

 

 

Tickets: Score Big

      

Co-main event: Yoel Romero vs. Robert Whittaker

After knocking out Chris Weidman at UFC 205 with a brutal flying knee, Romero cemented himself as the top contender in the UFC’s middleweight division. It seemed as though Romero was to be given the next title shot, but the return of GSP got in Romero’s way and caught Bisping‘s attention.

When that fight fell apart largely to GSP‘s inability to fight earlier than November of this year, UFC president Dana White scrapped the fight and was going to give Romero the next title shot. But then Bisping claimed that he would not recover from his knee injury in time, so the UFC put up an interim belt for Romero and Whittaker to fight over.

Whittaker is in a position that not many people saw coming so soon. When he finished Jacare Souza back in April, every fighter at 185-pounds was put on notice. A new threat emerged in the former rugby player with fists of stone, and he was awarded with a bout against one of the most physically-gifted fighters the UFC has ever seen.

Just check out how impressive he looked during his open workout Wednesday, courtesy of MMAjunkie:

Saturday’s co-main event is an interesting fight for a number of reasons. Whittaker showed good takedown defense against Souza, but Romero is a whole other animal. An Olympic silver medalist, Romero’s wrestling is far beyond the skill-level of any fighter in the UFC, regardless of weight classes. 

Romero will look to use his wrestling and explosiveness to get Whittaker on the ground and maul him. As for Whittaker, the gameplan is simple: stay on your feet at all costs.

Whittaker has proved he can hang with the big guns of the middleweight division with wins over Uriah Hall, Derek Brunson and the aforementioned Souza, but it’s hard to imagine that he can finish, let alone win against a fighter of Romero’s pedigree.

Romero truly believes that he is on a mission from God to win the title, and it’ll take a lot more than a good right hand from Whittaker to knock him off course. Look for Romero to take control of the fight from the get-go with his superior grappling skills and wear down Whittaker to earn the stoppage in the third round.

Prediction: Romero wins interim title.

          

Main event: Amanda Nunes vs. Valentina Shevchenko

There’s no nice way of putting this: there is bad blood between Nunes and Shevchenko.

Their beef doesn’t necessarily date back to Nunes‘ victory back in 2016, but it certainly added fuel to the fire as Nunes and Shevchenko began trash-talking just moments after Shevchenko finished Julianna Pena inside back in January. 

That trash talk escalated until the fighters squared off just a matter of weeks ago, where it appeared that Nunes took a shot at Shevchenko during their stare down when the challenger got a little too close for Nunes‘ liking. 

The first fight between “The Lioness” and “Bullet” was dominated by Nunes for the majority of the first two rounds. But in the closing moments of the second round, it appeared that Nunes was beginning to run out of gas as Shevchenko began to dictate the pace of the fight. The third round went to Shevchenko, but Nunes had done enough in the first 10 minutes of the fight to earn the victory on the judges’ scorecard despite ending the fight in bad shape.

In fairness to Nunes, she didn’t have to train for a five-round fight, but that might be the weakness that Shevchenko will be looking for on Saturday. A muay thai artist who has proved more than capable of competing on the ground, Shevchenko will look to keep Nunes‘ at a distance. The last thing Shevchenko wants is to get caught by one of Nunes‘ nasty combinations early in the fight. 

In order to upset the champion, Shevchenko has to bring Nunes into the deep end, meaning this fight has to go into the championship rounds in order to have a shot at getting her arm raised by the referee. She won’t be able to finish Nunes, who hasn’t lost or been finished since 2014 to Cat Zingano, but she can win by effective striking and Octagon control, giving her the points on the scorecards.

For Nunes, she has to fight the only way she knows how. And that’s by moving forward.

Against Shevchenko the first time around, Miesha Tate and Rousey, Nunes came out as the aggressor and was able to take care of business early and often. If she’s not able to finish Shevchenko in the opening rounds of the fight, she has to be able to pace herself in order to survive, otherwise Shevchenko’s muay thai strikes to the body will empty out Nunes‘ gas tank before she knows what hit her.

Even though Shevchenko will go into this fight full of confidence after consecutive wins over Holly Holm and Julianna Pena, she won’t have enough to take down Nunes, who will continue to enjoy her time at the top of the division that is in desperate need of stability after Rousey‘s fall from grace.

Anticipate two fighters displaying high-level striking before Nunes catches Shevchenko with a combination in the second round, sending the Kyrgyzstani-Peruvian to the canvas. Nunes will take this fight to the ground and look for the submission via rear-naked choke en route to her third consecutive title defense.

Prediction: Nunes cements her legacy as one of the division’s best-ever champions.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC 213 Open Workout Videos: Watch Yoel Romero Go Crazy

The UFC will kick off a packed next two months of mixed martial arts (and even some boxing) action with this weekend’s (Sat., July 8, 2017) stacked UFC 213 pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Steamrolling women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes will face deserving top contender Valentina Shevchenko for the gold in a […]

The post UFC 213 Open Workout Videos: Watch Yoel Romero Go Crazy appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

The UFC will kick off a packed next two months of mixed martial arts (and even some boxing) action with this weekend’s (Sat., July 8, 2017) stacked UFC 213 pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Steamrolling women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes will face deserving top contender Valentina Shevchenko for the gold in a rematch of their close UFC 196 match-up in the main event.

In the co-main event, top-ranked middleweights Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker will meet for the interim championship with champion Michael “The Count” Bisping on the sidelines healing up from knee surgery and still appearing to want to fight GSP. Many are of the view that Romero vs. Whittaker is for the “real” 185-pound title, making UFC 213’s co-headliner an extremely important fight.

And Romero clearly knows it, putting on a show for the fans with a back handspring, splits, and an intense flex-off as he looks to be extremely hyped for his first UFC title bout.

“Solider of God” and the other main bout fighters participated in the traditional fight week open workouts free for the public from the Park Theater in Vegas today (Wed., July 5, 2017). Watch Nunes, Schevchenko, Romero, and Whittaker’s full workout videos thanks to MMA Fighting below:

The post UFC 213 Open Workout Videos: Watch Yoel Romero Go Crazy appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

The Complete Guide to UFC 213: Nunes vs. Shevchenko

International Fight Week has returned.
The UFC’s annual summer event is often dubbed their version of WrestleMania. Historically, it is one of the biggest events of the year, with thousands of fans from across the world descending on Las Vegas for five…

International Fight Week has returned.

The UFC’s annual summer event is often dubbed their version of WrestleMania. Historically, it is one of the biggest events of the year, with thousands of fans from across the world descending on Las Vegas for five days of fights and fun, culminating with a stacked pay-per-view card on Saturday night.

This year, things are a little different.

The UFC is presenting just two fight cards instead of the usual three, and Saturday night’s PPV event is, by any logical measure, just not up to the same kind of quality level we’re used to.

It’s a good fight card, for sure, but any fan in their right mind is already looking past Saturday night toward UFC 214 and its otherworldly bill on July 29. And the best fight of the week might be the Friday main event between Michael Johnson and Justin Gaethje.

Still, we’ve got two title matches on this card and one of those will be violent. So let’s take a look at those fights, plus the rest of the card, and figure out what we should be looking forward to on Saturday night.

Begin Slideshow

Ronda Rousey Breaks Silence With An Extremely Strange Story

Ronda Rousey appeared in her first public interview since her TKO loss to Amanda Nunes in the main event of last December’s UFC 207, but it wasn’t to talk about anything related to her up-in-the-air UFC future. Instead, Rousey discussed her new coaching role on ABC’s ‘Battle of the Network Stars’ on ‘Live With Kelly […]

The post Ronda Rousey Breaks Silence With An Extremely Strange Story appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Ronda Rousey appeared in her first public interview since her TKO loss to Amanda Nunes in the main event of last December’s UFC 207, but it wasn’t to talk about anything related to her up-in-the-air UFC future.

Instead, Rousey discussed her new coaching role on ABC’s ‘Battle of the Network Stars’ on ‘Live With Kelly and Ryan’ this morning (Wed., July 5, 2017), and talk then shifted to her engagement to UFC heavyweight Travis Browne before taking a turn for the strange.

Apparently, some thugs broke into Rousey’s home while she and Browne were on vacation in New Zealand, which is where ‘Hapa’ popped the question. And the vandals got away with quite the haul, even if it didn’t end well for them (quotes transcribed by MMA Weekly):

We stopped by the house right before we were going to go to the airport and he was going to sneak away and go ask my mom for permission but right when we got to the house, we realized we were robbed. Someone had been squatting in my house for like three days, sleeping in my bed.

“[They] stole my Olympic rings, stole my guns, stole all my precious jewelry, every headphone in the house, credit cards.”

Rousey explained that her security cameras caught the criminals with shocking ease, as the not-so-smart robbers were skaters who frequented a nearby skate park in their home base of Venice, Calif. With the cam footage aiding him, Rousey revealed how quickly Browne tracked them down, being ever-so-careful to not physically assault the criminals:

“We have security cameras so we looked back at them and we saw that they were a bunch of kids with skateboards and there’s a famous skate park right across the street cause we’re in Venice. So my man’s 6’7” like 260 [pounds], he like beelines it straight to the skateboard park, finds the guys right away.

“He’s smart enough not to [hit them], we’ll get sued pretty hard, but he found the police right then and they caught them.”

But even though the situation ended up as well as it could have for the embattled former UFC women’s bantamweight champion, it still understandably doesn’t sit well with the onetime queen of MMA. She thinks the robbers knew it was her house for sure, something that is probably the case after she was previously tagged with graffiti shortly after her latest defeat earlier this year:

“They knew it was my house,” Rousey said. “There’s no way you can’t not know it’s my house. What little punks.”

So Rousey was able to find some just desserts for the squatters who robbed her of her valued possessions, and is now set to resume her career in the limelight on major network television. Add that to her engagement to Browne and her life is obviously full even without any discussion of the sport she ruled with an iron fist.

The legions of fans who once thought she could defeat many of the male bantamweights fighting in the UFC would most likely like an explanation of where, if anywhere, her fighting career is headed, but judging solely on what she chose to talk about in her first public interview since losing to Nunes, fighting isn’t at the top of her list.

The post Ronda Rousey Breaks Silence With An Extremely Strange Story appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Ronda Rousey Breaks Silence With An Extremely Strange Story

Ronda Rousey appeared in her first public interview since her TKO loss to Amanda Nunes in the main event of last December’s UFC 207, but it wasn’t to talk about anything related to her up-in-the-air UFC future. Instead, Rousey discussed her new coaching role on ABC’s ‘Battle of the Network Stars’ on ‘Live With Kelly […]

The post Ronda Rousey Breaks Silence With An Extremely Strange Story appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Ronda Rousey appeared in her first public interview since her TKO loss to Amanda Nunes in the main event of last December’s UFC 207, but it wasn’t to talk about anything related to her up-in-the-air UFC future.

Instead, Rousey discussed her new coaching role on ABC’s ‘Battle of the Network Stars’ on ‘Live With Kelly and Ryan’ this morning (Wed., July 5, 2017), and talk then shifted to her engagement to UFC heavyweight Travis Browne before taking a turn for the strange.

Apparently, some thugs broke into Rousey’s home while she and Browne were on vacation in New Zealand, which is where ‘Hapa’ popped the question. And the vandals got away with quite the haul, even if it didn’t end well for them (quotes transcribed by MMA Weekly):

We stopped by the house right before we were going to go to the airport and he was going to sneak away and go ask my mom for permission but right when we got to the house, we realized we were robbed. Someone had been squatting in my house for like three days, sleeping in my bed.

“[They] stole my Olympic rings, stole my guns, stole all my precious jewelry, every headphone in the house, credit cards.”

Rousey explained that her security cameras caught the criminals with shocking ease, as the not-so-smart robbers were skaters who frequented a nearby skate park in their home base of Venice, Calif. With the cam footage aiding him, Rousey revealed how quickly Browne tracked them down, being ever-so-careful to not physically assault the criminals:

“We have security cameras so we looked back at them and we saw that they were a bunch of kids with skateboards and there’s a famous skate park right across the street cause we’re in Venice. So my man’s 6’7” like 260 [pounds], he like beelines it straight to the skateboard park, finds the guys right away.

“He’s smart enough not to [hit them], we’ll get sued pretty hard, but he found the police right then and they caught them.”

But even though the situation ended up as well as it could have for the embattled former UFC women’s bantamweight champion, it still understandably doesn’t sit well with the onetime queen of MMA. She thinks the robbers knew it was her house for sure, something that is probably the case after she was previously tagged with graffiti shortly after her latest defeat earlier this year:

“They knew it was my house,” Rousey said. “There’s no way you can’t not know it’s my house. What little punks.”

So Rousey was able to find some just desserts for the squatters who robbed her of her valued possessions, and is now set to resume her career in the limelight on major network television. Add that to her engagement to Browne and her life is obviously full even without any discussion of the sport she ruled with an iron fist.

The legions of fans who once thought she could defeat many of the male bantamweights fighting in the UFC would most likely like an explanation of where, if anywhere, her fighting career is headed, but judging solely on what she chose to talk about in her first public interview since losing to Nunes, fighting isn’t at the top of her list.

The post Ronda Rousey Breaks Silence With An Extremely Strange Story appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

UFC 213 Will Be Fine, but It’s Hard to Forget Robbie Lawler vs. Donald Cerrone

As recently as a week ago, UFC 213 shaped up as perhaps the first great MMA pay-per-view of 2017.
Now? Well, maybe not quite so much.
Saturday’s fight card from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas still looks perfectly fine, headlined by a women’s …

As recently as a week ago, UFC 213 shaped up as perhaps the first great MMA pay-per-view of 2017.

Now? Well, maybe not quite so much.

Saturday’s fight card from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas still looks perfectly fine, headlined by a women’s bantamweight title fight in a rematch between Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko as well as Yoel Romero vs. Robert Whittaker for the interim middleweight championship.

But with just a handful of days left before we all plunk down $60 to watch on PPV, the ghost of Robbie Lawler’s welterweight slobber-knocker against Donald Cerrone still haunts our dreams.

It was six days ago that MMA Fighting’s Luke Thomas broke the news that Cerrone was injured and out of the hotly anticipated 170-pound fight. Since then, the bout had been shuffled off the UFC 213 card and onto UFC 214 on July 29.

UFC President Dana White filled MMA Junkie’s John Morgan in on exactly what prompted the delay:

“Here’s the deal. ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone is a stud. He’s too tough for his own good. He absolutely wanted to fight. The kid’s got a pulled groin; he’s got a bruise from his knee to the inside of his groin. And his other knee is blowing up; he’s got staph infection. Could he come out and fight? Probably. Should he come out and fight Robbie Lawler with a pulled groin? No, he shouldn’t. We’re going to get him healthy and remake the fight.”

Here’s what Cerrone had to say to fans in an Instagram post shortly after his withdrawal was announced:

This is the second time Lawler vs. Cerrone has been postponed. The first time, the bout got called off just days after it was announced in November 2016, when Lawler reportedly decided he needed more time to prepare.

This time, we got so, so close.

To add to UFC 213’s troubles, Lawler vs. Cerrone wasn’t the only high-profile bout to fall by the wayside, either. UFC events typically lose a few proposed scraps between their announcement and fight night, but this time the losses hit especially hard. 

Remember, T.J. Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt were originally intended to settle their feud with a fight for the men’s bantamweight championship here. Of course, that was before Garbrandt pulled out with a back injury, leaving Dillashaw to hunt around for another fight.

Still, the disappearance of Lawler vs. Cerrone is the biggest disappointment. Because make no mistake, seeing these two high-energy, no-nonsense headhunters go at it is the stuff MMA legends are made off.

At the moment, Cerrone stands at 4-1 since moving up to welterweight in February 2016. His most recent appearance was a second-round TKO loss to Jorge Masvidal in January 2017, but 17 performance-based fight-night bonuses to Cerrone’s name during his UFC/WEC career attest to the fact the Cowboy is one of White and Co.’s most popular attractions.

That popularity is as durable as Cerrone himself. Even after the Masvidal loss and now this delay, expect his momentum to merely keep on trucking.

The same can be said for Lawler, who spent a year-and-a-half as 170-pound champion from December 2014-July 2016. Lawler was also going off as the slight favorite, according to OddsShark, leading up to the moment their UFC 213 clash got scratched.

OddsShark analyst Justin Hartling summed up our expectations for this bout about as well as anybody could when the first five words of his breakdown were: “I hope you like violence.”

What MMA fans will likely get from Lawler and Cerrone—whenever they finally make it to the cage together—is nothing short of full-scale warfare.

Now, though, UFC 213 will have to soldier on without this attraction, and it remains unclear how much sights (or the event’s PPV buyrate) will be lowered because of it.

Nunes is nearly a year into her reign as 135-pound champion, but so far doesn’t seem to have been launched to superstardom by either her championship win over Miesha Tate at UFC 200 or her first-round TKO over Ronda Rousey at UFC 207.

Likewise, Shevchenko shapes up as a bit of an enigmatic challenger in Nunes’ first title defense. The fact she just lost to Nunes in the pair’s first fight at UFC 196 in March 2016 doesn’t do the marketability of this matchup a ton of favors, either.

It’s probable that matchmakers would’ve rather had either Holly Holm or Juliana Pena vying for the title in this spot, but Shevchenko beat both of them in back-to-back appearances.

Nunes vs. Shevchenko is an interesting clash between two high-level strikers and will likely be a good enough scrap to delight hardcore fans, but—in the parlance of White himself—it’s unlikely to move the needle on PPV.

The same could be true of Romero vs. Whittaker.

This interim middleweight title fight is as intriguing a pure physical matchup as we’re likely to get in the Octagon all year, but it features two men who haven’t proved themselves as significant draws.

The 26-year-old Whittaker is riding a seven-fight win streak, but is a freshly minted title contender after his second-round TKO over Jacare Souza in April 2017. Meanwhile, Romero has been circling a championship opportunity like a shark since soon after his UFC arrival in 2013.

With champion Michael Bisping either hurt or waiting for a fight against the returning Georges St-Pierre, the winner of this fight may well lay claim to being the best 185-pounder in the world.

But can the hype for this matchup carry a fight card on its own? No way.

Add a heavyweight fight between Fabricio Werdum and Alistair Overeem and a lightweight tussle pitting Anthony Pettis against Jim Miller to its four fight card and you’ve got all the makings of a fine Saturday night.

UFC 213 is a decent PPV.  It’ll be a good event—better than average, considering the way 2017 has gone so far.

But it’s no longer the blockbuster it looked like a week ago.

And we have the loss of Lawler vs. Cerrone to blame for that.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com