Tag: ronda rousey vs amanda nunes

Amanda Nunes Reacts To Valentina Shevchenko’s Rio Refusal

Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko are having a tough time agreeing to a date for their perceived upcoming title bout. A rematch between the two, who fought in a close bout that current women’s bantamweight champion Nunes won at last year’s UFC 196, was all but set in stone when Shevchenko submitted Julianna Pena at

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Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko are having a tough time agreeing to a date for their perceived upcoming title bout.

A rematch between the two, who fought in a close bout that current women’s bantamweight champion Nunes won at last year’s UFC 196, was all but set in stone when Shevchenko submitted Julianna Pena at January 28’s UFC on FOX 23 and Nunes gave up her quest to fight for the featherweight belt.

All that was left was to set the date, so Nunes recently (and understandably) called Shevchenko out for June 3’s UFC 212 from her homeland in Rio de Janeiro:

‘Bullet’ was quick to fire back, explaining that the UFC had offered them both a fast turnaround to fight at April 8’s UFC 210 event from Buffalo, but “The Lioness” turned it down so she made plans. Because of that fact, Shevchenko proclaimed she’d be ready anytime in July:

Finally, the champion took a bit of umbrage to her foil’s reply, noting that challengers do not pick the date of the fight, only show up and fight:

That’s an understandable response from the champ, who’s coming off a dominant first-round stoppage of former champ Ronda Rousey that lasted only 48 brutal seconds.

However, it looks like Nunes’ attempt to get her next title defense confirmed for Brazil backfired when she turned down an earlier fight day, as Shevchenko is now aiming for the festivities of International Fight Week in July.

UFC 212 still boats a high-profile title fight, with longtime featherweight champ Jose Aldo set to defend his newly-reacquired belt against streaking interim champ Max Holloway in the main event.

As for Nunes and Shevchenko, who are you picking to win the rematch, no matter when it happens?

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Amanda Nunes Reveals How Bad UFC Hurt Her Before UFC 207

Women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes was understandably angered at the UFC’s  decision to only promote returning superstar Ronda Rousey prior to their main event fight at UFC 207. The questionable call came from an obvious business standpoint despite the fact that “Rowdy” was surrounded by a myriad of question marks while Nunes had been dominating

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Women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes was understandably angered at the UFC’s  decision to only promote returning superstar Ronda Rousey prior to their main event fight at UFC 207.

The questionable call came from an obvious business standpoint despite the fact that “Rowdy” was surrounded by a myriad of question marks while Nunes had been dominating top-level competition the entire year Rousey was absent from the sport following her first loss, a disheartening knockout to Holly Holm at 2015’s UFC 193.

It lead to a response from Nunes that many felt was a bit harsh after her 48second domination of Rousey, something the champion has since apologized for. But during a recent Q&A session prior to tonight’s (Sat., March 11, 2017) UFC Fight Night 106 from Fortaleza, Brazil (via MMA Fighting), Nunes revealed she wasn’t as angry as she was sad at the UFC’s overall treatment of the better fighter, and it made her want to punish ‘Rowdy’ more:

“I talk about anger, but I was sad. I felt alone, you know what I mean? Everything was for Ronda, and I was the champion, the best in the world. That’s why I say that. They hurt me a lot. I fought that day with anger.

“Every time I touched Ronda, connected a punch, I wanted more and more,” she continued. “That’s why the fight was so fast. Every time I connected, I felt that she couldn’t take it, so I threw more and only stopped when it was over. But it was good.

“It was great, you know? Every punch I landed in that face made me wanna laugh, but I held it. It was great.”

Photo: Mark J. Rebilas of USA Today Sports

The words make sense watching how she took her anger out on Rousey’s face that night, yet that doesn’t mean she wishes the superstar former champ, whose camp she all-out smashed in her post-fight interview, any further harm. In fact, she hopes “Rowdy” can use a change of scenery to make a successful comeback and go out with a win:

“She needs to take some time to recover. A loss is something tough. I’ve lost before, you need great people around you, your family, people giving you positive energy. I want to see Ronda coming back, her finishing her career with a win. Every athlete deserves that. I don’t want it to end this way because it’s sad.

“I won, but I don’t wish her any harm. I want her to come back and maybe, who knows, a rematch in the future? It would be perfect.”

It’s a stark departure from Nunes now, as it’s clear she’s had time to let her anger and hurt from the UFC dissipate in order to objectively view Rousey and the circumstances overall.

Still, it’s fair to question if the UFC would be better served to start promoting a dominant, stoppage-motivated champ rather than put their success on the shoulders of a fading star who may or maybe not ever return to the octagon again.

Will “Rowdy’s” career end like “The Lioness” hopes it does, or is the onetime freight train too far gone due to the faults of Edmond Tarverdyan?

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Ronda Rousey May Just Return To MMA – And The UFC Needs Her

It’s been almost two months since former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey suffered her second straight stoppage loss to Amanda Nunes at December 30’s UFC 207 from Las Vegas, and we still haven’t heard or seen an official public word from the “Rowdy” one herself. Sure, she released a canned thank you to her

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It’s been almost two months since former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey suffered her second straight stoppage loss to Amanda Nunes at December 30’s UFC 207 from Las Vegas, and we still haven’t heard or seen an official public word from the “Rowdy” one herself.

Sure, she released a canned thank you to her fans shortly after the loss, and followed it up with a cryptic motivational quote days later. Rousey also surfaced – if you want to call it that – again on social media this week with the following Instagram post that could suggest she’s at least considering a return to the competition she once ruled for years:

#quotephase

A post shared by rondarousey (@rondarousey) on

That’s a speculative-at-best bit of info to go off of, yet it’s by far the most suggestive words we’ve got from Rousey in the weeks and months after her second straight devastating stoppage loss.

Her shockingly rapid downfall was of course set into motion by a vicious Holly Holm head kick in the main event of UFC 193, and many urged her to ditch her highly criticized head coach Edmond Tarverdyan and find a new camp, but she refused. That lead to another loss to the dominant Nunes, and many believed and still believe she will retire.

However, even a slim chance of her returning is big news for the UFC in their painfully tough start to 2017. With her and lightweight champion Conor McGregor’s statuses up in the air, new owners WME-IMG are finding out the hard way just how star-driven this business is, and they need both of their biggest stars back soon.

Rousey’s previously high-profile acting roles seem to be reducing a bit after two losses, and while she doesn’t need the money, fighting is in her DNA. It’s clearly going to take a broad change of scenery and philosophy, however.

What do you think? Will “Rowdy” ever return to the cage?

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Ronda Rousey Surfaces For Target Practice In Las Vegas

It looks like Ronda Rousey isn’t trusting her Olympic-level judo – or her highly-criticized striking – to defend her any longer. After graffiti artists vandalized the outside of her house in the days after after her first-round TKO loss to Amanda Nunes at December 30’s UFC 207 from Las Vegas, Rousey has apparently began to take

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It looks like Ronda Rousey isn’t trusting her Olympic-level judo – or her highly-criticized striking – to defend her any longer.

After graffiti artists vandalized the outside of her house in the days after after her first-round TKO loss to Amanda Nunes at December 30’s UFC 207 from Las Vegas, Rousey has apparently began to take the steps to obtain her concealed carry permit to carry a firearm.

Photos from TMZ Sports showed Rousey and boyfriend Travis Browne, whose bout with Derrick Lewis was recently promoted to the main event of February 19’s UFC Fight Night 105, apparently taking some target practice at The Range 702 gun store recently, with Rousey utilizing a blue Glock 42 9mm pistol to take a special course for her permit. “Rowdy” also participated in target practice, also a requirement of the course.

It’s the first semi-public spotting of MMA’s fallen queen, whose self-imposed media silence that carried over from her shocking UFC 193 loss to Holly Holm into the aftermath of her follow-up loss to Nunes, a bout before which her outright refusal to talk the media fueled the belief she was far from mentally ready to take on a world-class challenge like ‘The Lioness.’

She’s made sparingly little effort to address the MMA world since, posting only a canned statement thanking her fans before following that with an inspirational quote from author J.K. Rowling that claimed she would reinvent herself several days later.

We still don’t know if and when Rousey will ever return, but it appears if and when she does, she’s going to be armed.

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Quote: 400 Days Of Rousey Build-Up Came Crashing Down In Seconds

It’s no secret that the MMA world stood still in the moments directly after Amanda Nunes knocked out Ronda Rousey in a dominating 48-second show of force in the main event of last month’s (December 30, 2017) UFC 207 from Las Vegas. But one man who wasn’t afforded the luxury of stepping back to take

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It’s no secret that the MMA world stood still in the moments directly after Amanda Nunes knocked out Ronda Rousey in a dominating 48-second show of force in the main event of last month’s (December 30, 2017) UFC 207 from Las Vegas.

But one man who wasn’t afforded the luxury of stepping back to take in the shocking scene was Octagon analyst Jon Anik, who had to make a seamless transition from the UFC 207 pay-per-view (PPV) broadcast to the FOX Sports post-fight show mere seconds after Nunes stopped Rousey.

It was a harrowing scene even for the experienced broadcaster, and he elaborated on the unique circumstances in a recent appearance on MMA Junkie Radio, deeming it one of the strangest things he’s had to do on television following more than a year of hype and build-up:

“Having to go on the air 30 seconds literally after Amanda Nunes knocked out Ronda Rousey was sort of one of the weirdest things I’ve had to do on TV. We do it all the time, we do these post-fight shows, but we knew we were going to go quickly and it was really hard to just collect my thoughts after that moment. It was just stunning the way it went down.

“You had 400-plus days of build-up for Ronda Rousey’s return only to see it come crashing down in a matter of seconds. And it came on the heels of a classic between Cody Garbrandt and Dominick Cruz that went the full 25 minutes, so you thought you were settling in for a little bit of fighting, and you didn’t get it.”

Anik1

Anik also had the presence of mind to give “The Lioness” her due in a time of flailing media critcism of Rousey, adding that he could have taken an entire show to praise Nunes:

“We could spend 30 minutes on Amanda Nunes if we just want to leave the show with that and talk about Nunes. She gave you enough in that fight and in that fight week with the way she handled everything, to talk about for 30 minutes. So big ups for Amanda Nunes.”

The week leading up to UFC 207 provided another unique scenario in that Rousey refused to do any and all media, making it like no other PPV card due to the nonexistent amount of appearances on which to gauge her return. Many felt the extra time allowed to focus on the fight would propel her to a win, but that wasn’t the case:

“We’ve got to be super careful on the broadcast, because potentially we’re calling the fights of these individuals,” Anik said. “So a lot of the noise you try to tune out. It’s interesting when it comes to this fight, because intangibly you had to look at those things for Ronda Rousey.

“So that was all we were able to focus on, we weren’t able to focus on anything cause she wasn’t giving us anything. And as far as a lot of people were concerned, that was going to be something that worked on her advantage. It didn’t.”

Finally, Anik touched on how Rousey was in new territory attempting to come back from her loss to Holly Holm at UFC 193, and that was a tall task even elite athletes have a tough time with. He recalled the example of Luke Rockhold – who was knocked out by Michael Bisping on a smaller comparative scale – and added Rousey didn’t exactly handle it well while noting he didn’t want to join the ranks of media members heaping criticisms on ‘Rowdy’:

“After the Holly Holm fight, one thing critically I did say – and maybe it’s not even that critical – was, ‘Here’s Ronda Rousey walking into her new life’. Like Luke Rockhold loses to Michael Bisping, ‘Welcome to your new life, bro.’ I saw him three months later. Luke just shook my hand, just shaking his head still. So, you walk back to your new life and not a lot of people can handle it.

“I don’t think she handled it well but certainly don’t look at me to pile on when the world is piling on her.”

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Cat Zingano Blasts Amanda Nunes For ‘Disrespecting’ Ronda Rousey

There’s been a mountain of varied criticisms heaped on former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in the aftermath of her 48-second loss to Amanda Nunes in the main event of UFC 207, but little shade has been throwing “The Lioness’” way for her similarly brutal response to Rousey’s downfall. That could be because not a

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There’s been a mountain of varied criticisms heaped on former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in the aftermath of her 48-second loss to Amanda Nunes in the main event of UFC 207, but little shade has been throwing “The Lioness’” way for her similarly brutal response to Rousey’s downfall.

That could be because not a single ounce of the UFC’s pre-fight promotional efforts were focused on Nunes, something that could have made the champ feel slighted and caused her to respond by silencing Rousey’s coach Edmond Tarverdyan in the Octagon, posting a brutal meme of Rousey online, stating “Rowdy” would retire, and finally offering the belief that she was never that good in the first place.

But the last woman to defeat Nunes – and one of the last to lose to Rousey – isn’t having any of it. Rightfully believing Rousey a pioneer of women’s MMA, No. 6-ranked UFC women’s bantamweight Cat Zingano, who finished Nunes in a come-from-behind performance at 2014’s UFC 178, spoke up online today to declare she’s coming for “The Lioness” once again due to her disrespect of Rousey:

Zingano has been out of action since a disappointing decision loss to Julianna Pena at last July’s UFC 200, her return bout following nearly a year-and-a-half off after losing to Rousey in only 14 seconds at UFC 184.

The longtime contender has seen several long breaks in a UFC career that began with fervent momentum when she stopped Miesha Tate to earn a title shot in her first Octagon bout at April 2013’s The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 17 Finale.

A lengthy bout of knee injuries and some extremely debilitating personal circumstances took much of Zingano’s once-lauded potential, but she’s still the last to defeat the 135-pound women’s champion who now appears to be the latest unstoppable force in MMA.

Zingano knows she has a lot of work to do to fight her way back to a title shot, but if she can, she apparently has a bone to pick with Nunes. Is the “Alpha Cat” a true danger to “The Lioness” at this point?

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