Amanda Nunes got the funniest line of the week. Cris Cyborg got the better argument. Both of those things can be true at once, and they’re going to share a lot of airtime between now and November 14.
The spark came from UFC on Paramount’s account on X, which posted a story about Din Thomas and the 2018 title fight. Thomas told Nunes beforehand not to stand and trade with Cyborg. Nunes stood and traded anyway, and she won. When Thomas asked her afterward why she ignored the plan, her answer, according to the post, was “She hit like a girl.” The account slapped a crying-laughing emoji on it, because of course it did.
I’ll admit it. That’s a great line. It’s the kind of thing you say when you’ve just done something nobody thought you could do, and you’re minutes into the adrenaline dump, and the cameras aren’t rolling yet. It has big Michael Jordan Last Dance energy, the whole bit where he took every slight personally, only in reverse. Nunes was the one handing out the personal insult, and Cyborg was the one who took it.
View post on X
And she took it to X on Tuesday.
The record does the talking
Cyborg’s first point was arithmetic. She wrote that she’s 18-0 since that fight when you combine her MMA and boxing bouts.
Yes, folding boxing into the total is a little generous with the bookkeeping. Nobody’s handing out a combined MMA-and-boxing belt. But 18 straight wins across two combat sports is a pretty loud answer to a question about how hard somebody punches. If Cyborg hits like a girl, she hits like a girl who hasn’t lost in 18 tries. That’s a girl most of the roster would rather not stand in front of.
The second point was the one with teeth. Cyborg wrote: “She refused the rematch then went on to lose to Juliana Pena and is fighting a Kayla Harrison after she lost to Pacheco.”
There’s a lot packed into one run-on sentence. The Pena mention exists to puncture the aura and remind everyone Nunes was beatable. The Pacheco jab is aimed at Harrison, which is Cyborg throwing a stray at the co-main event while she’s in the neighborhood. I respect the efficiency. But the phrase that matters is the first one. She refused the rematch.
Why the rematch line wins
I love fighters who call their shot and back it up, and Nunes did that in 2018. I can’t stand fighters who duck, and this is where her joke gets complicated. Cyborg’s whole case boils down to this: you don’t get to clown somebody’s power for years if you never let her try to prove you wrong a second time.
The timing makes it worse for Nunes. She’s coming back after more than three years away to face Harrison at UFC 334 for Harrison’s women’s bantamweight belt, in the co-main under Ciryl Gane vs. Josh Hokit at Madison Square Garden. On UFC’s Deep Waters, Nunes said the Harrison matchup wasn’t what pulled her back. “I would have come back anyways. I had a hard time being away,” she said. She also told the show she won’t retire with a win. “You gotta defend the belt, for sure,” she said, before adding, “Then we’re gonna see.”
So Nunes is planning to stick around and defend. Great. Against who?
MMA Fighting’s mailbag summed up women’s bantamweight in one word this week: collapsed. A Yahoo Sports takeaways column called 135 the weakest UFC women’s division in star power once Nunes and Harrison are gone. Harrison herself has said she might have retired if not for the allure of fighting Nunes, per that same mailbag. Her first title defense got canceled earlier this year by a neck injury that required surgery.
That means Nunes is promising title defenses in a division with almost nobody left to defend against, while the one person with a real grievance and an 18-fight win streak is sitting in her mentions. I don’t know what it would take on the business side to get that fight made. I do know that “She hit like a girl” would sell a rematch faster than anything the current bantamweight rankings could offer.
To be clear, Nunes doesn’t owe anyone a rematch she already won. She beat Cyborg, and that result isn’t going anywhere. But you can’t turn the win into a punchline and also act surprised when the punchline gets punched back. The joke only works if the other woman never gets the chance to make you eat it.
Nunes also has a fan in the Edmonton locker room. Chelsea Chandler, fresh off a kimura win over Melissa Croden, said she hopes Nunes wins and “sends that big b*tch packing,” meaning Harrison. Plenty of people want to see Nunes look like the old Lioness on November 14. I’m one of them, because a great villain needs a great win.
If she gets that win at the Garden and means what she said about defending, the first name she hears in the post-fight interview should belong to the woman she said hits like a girl.
