Asked at UFC 334 media day to name the opponent who pushed her hardest, Amanda Nunes went straight past the woman she fights on Saturday and landed on Cris Cyborg. The answer came during a media scrum, BJPenn.com reported, and Nunes made the comparison to Kayla Harrison herself.
“Respect. Size wise too,” Nunes said. “Cyborg’s huge. Cyborg is like double Kayla. Cyborg can knock me out.”
She kept going, and the part that stuck with her was the power. “The power that woman has and never lost before, all those things,” she said. Nunes drew a line between that night and this one, though she ranked the Cyborg fight above everything else on her résumé. “This fight is different but my biggest ones in history was becoming double champ against Cyborg, for sure.”
That win is the one that made Nunes a two-division champion, and it’s a big reason she’s widely considered the greatest female fighter the sport has produced. The two never fought again. One meeting was all anyone got.
Now Nunes is coming back for the first time in three years, and she’s walking straight into a title fight. Harrison holds the UFC women’s bantamweight championship and will defend it against Nunes on Saturday, November 14, at UFC 334. Harrison has her own layoff to account for. She has been recovering from neck surgery, and she was originally set to defend the belt at the start of this year before that plan fell apart. The same card also features Ciryl Gane defending the heavyweight title against Josh Hokit, so this is a stacked night with two belts on the line.
Nunes didn’t leave room for doubt about how she expects Saturday to go. “I will win on Saturday,” she said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.” She said she already has wall space cleared for her belts, and that whatever comes after is up to the promotion. “Anybody after that. Whatever the UFC wants to do.”
My take: this is a fighter doing quiet pre-fight work with a smile. Calling your toughest opponent “like double Kayla” is a sincere tribute to Cyborg, and it also tells the current champion, in front of every camera at media day, that she isn’t the scariest thing Nunes has ever stood across from. Harrison is a two-time Olympic judo gold medalist type of problem in the clinch, and size was never Nunes’ only concern with her. Three years is a long time away, and nobody knows yet what it took out of Nunes. Harrison is coming off a surgically repaired neck, so both women carry questions into the cage. Nunes has already decided where the belt is going to hang. We find out Saturday night whether the wall gets filled.
