Fast facts
- Division: Women’s bantamweight (former UFC women’s featherweight champion, two-time UFC women’s bantamweight champion)
- Record: Full pro record not listed in our sources. She had seven UFC women’s title-fight wins by the end of 2019 and six successful title defenses overall.
- Nationality: Brazilian-American, born May 30, 1988, in Pojuca, Bahia
- Team/gym: Came up at the Edson Carvalho academy in Salvador under Ricardo Carvalho. Her current camp isn’t named in our sources.
- Notable wins: Miesha Tate (UFC 200), Ronda Rousey (UFC 207), Valentina Shevchenko twice (UFC 196, UFC 215), Cris Cyborg (UFC 232), Holly Holm (UFC 239), Julianna Peña (UFC 277)
The alarm went off at about 4:30 in the morning, and the teenage girl sleeping on the mats at a Salvador jiu-jitsu academy got up to clean the place before the 6 a.m. class. She lived there because the apartment she shared with her sister was too far from the gym, and her coach had offered her a spot. Years later Amanda Nunes described that stretch plainly: “I slept on the mat, I woke up at about 4:30 am to clean the whole gym with the coach.” She remembered the view more fondly than the floor. The gym faced Porto da Barra and the sea, so she would train, shower and walk the shore, and she has said it was perfect for her.
She was the only woman living there. The academy’s logo was two lions, so her coach and training partners started calling her Leoa, lioness in Portuguese. She still answers to it.
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A mother who boxed
Nunes grew up in Pojuca, a small town outside Salvador, the youngest of three sisters. Her parents split when she was four, and her mother raised the girls while working as a school administrative assistant and selling hot dogs, sweets and beauty products on the side. Nunes has called her loving and strict. Amanda wanted to play soccer, played for local teams in Pojuca and Salvador, and earned a tryout with Vitória, but her mother wanted her focused on school.
Fighting was already in the house. Her uncle fought Vale Tudo, and her mother, who trained boxing herself, worked his corner. Nunes started capoeira at five because a teacher complained she was too hyperactive, then karate at seven. Her mother’s advice stuck with her for life: “the first strike has to be yours.”
At 16 her sister Vanessa brought her to a jiu-jitsu dojo, and she picked up boxing around the same time. She was the only woman in the room and she beat up the men in sparring until there was nobody left to beat. At 17 she moved to Salvador for the Carvalho academy and added judo. The grappling résumé that followed is serious: Pan American gold as a blue belt in 2008, World Jiu-Jitsu gold as a purple belt in 2009, NAGA world titles at lightweight and absolute in 2012. She now holds a black belt in BJJ and a brown belt in judo.
The early losses
What I find most human about Nunes’s career is how unfinished she looked at first. She lost her pro debut on March 8, 2008, to Ana Maria by first-round armbar. She then won five straight by knockout and walked into Strikeforce in January 2011 and flattened Julia Budd in 14 seconds.
Eight months later Alexis Davis exposed the gas tank. Nunes came out hurling heavy shots in Round 1, faded fast, started Round 2 already spent, got reversed on a takedown attempt and was finished from full mount late in the round. She lost a decision to Sarah D’Alelio at Invicta FC 4. Then, at UFC 178 in September 2014, she nearly stopped Cat Zingano with punches in the first round, dropped the second, and was finished by TKO in the third.
Plenty of fighters with that much early power become a cautionary tale about front-loading. Nunes became something else. After Zingano, she stopped Shayna Baszler in Round 1, dropped Sara McMann with a three-punch combination and choked her out in Round 1, then beat Valentina Shevchenko on all three cards at UFC 196.
The run
UFC 200, July 9, 2016. She hurt Miesha Tate early with knees and punches and finished her with a rear-naked choke in Round 1, becoming the first openly gay champion in UFC history. Five months later Ronda Rousey came back at UFC 207 and lasted 48 seconds.
The rematch with Shevchenko at UFC 215 in Edmonton was as close as a fight gets. Nunes took a split decision, and out of 22 media outlets, 10 scored it for her, 10 for Shevchenko and two called it a draw. She then stopped Raquel Pennington in Round 5 at UFC 224, the first UFC event headlined by two openly gay fighters.
Then came UFC 232. She moved up to featherweight to face Cris Cyborg and knocked her out in 51 seconds, becoming the first woman to hold UFC belts in two divisions at once. A head kick and punches finished Holly Holm at UFC 239. She outgrappled Germaine de Randamie for five rounds at UFC 245, beat Felicia Spencer 50-44, 50-44, 50-45 at UFC 250, and caught Megan Anderson in a triangle armbar in Round 1 at UFC 259. She remains the only fighter in UFC history to defend titles in two weight classes while holding both.
Her style is easy to describe and miserable to fight. She hunts early, she hits hard enough to end things in under a minute, and when the striking stalls she has a black-belt grappling game to fall back on. MMA Mania’s Ryan Harkness, writing in a recent mailbag about how cautious the current women’s divisions feel, reached for Nunes as the counterexample, recalling how she “went for the kill when she smelled blood.”
The loss and the answer
UFC 269, December 11, 2021, is the night people bring up. Nunes dominated Julianna Peña in Round 1, got outstruck in Round 2 and tapped to a rear-naked choke. It was a massive upset. The two coached opposite each other on The Ultimate Fighter 30, and at UFC 277 in July 2022 Nunes won the rematch by dominant unanimous decision. That made her the first fighter of either gender to become a double champion twice.
A trilogy was booked for UFC 289 in June 2023, but Peña broke ribs in camp. Irene Aldana stepped in, Nunes beat her by dominant decision, and she retired in the cage during her post-fight interview. Home life was full by then. She is married to Nina Nunes, a former UFC strawweight she credits for her success, and their daughters were born in September 2020 and November 2023.
Coming back
The UFC announced during the UFC 314 broadcast in April 2025 that Nunes would enter the Hall of Fame’s modern wing that June. On June 5, 2025, she announced she was coming back to face the winner of Kayla Harrison vs. Julianna Peña. Harrison won the belt.
They were set for UFC 324 on January 24, 2026, until Harrison’s neck gave out. She told the Deep Waters podcast, as reported by MMA Fighting, that she has five herniated discs and needed a two-level fusion, with surgery coming about two weeks before the fight. The bout was reportedly linked to UFC 331 in September before being pushed again. Harrison says she’s healthy now, and she framed the fight as personal: “Am I who I say I am?”
The two used to train together, back when Nunes ruled two divisions and Harrison was a two-time Olympic judo champion turning herself into a two-time PFL champion. Nunes is 38 now and hasn’t fought since June 2023. Harrison is the champion. UFC 334 is November 14 in New York, and the girl who learned that the first strike has to be yours will get her chance to throw it.
