Amanda Nunes details injury ridden training camp leading up to UFC 269
By Nicole Bosco
Amanda Nunes details what went wrong in the leadup to her UFC 269 loss to Juliana Peña.
Amanda Nunes is known by many as the greatest female fighter to have ever stepped into the UFC Octagon. She is the first female dual division champion, but she is coming off a huge loss. Nunes lost her bantamweight title to Juliana Peña last month at UFC 269. Since the loss, Nunes has agreed to a rematch with Peña following serving as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter season across from Peña. On the media day for the upcoming season, Nunes spoke to the media about what she felt went wrong for her in the leadup to that last fight.
“Honestly I feel like it was a combination of a lot of things,” Nunes explained. “You know, we go through a lot of things in a fight, especially injuries and we try to train with injuries. If I take a look back at my training camp, the first fight I had COVID, I was doing good in that camp and then I get COVID and I have to stop and really start over. Finally, I start over and I get a couple of issues that I have to go through weekly but I don’t want to let that fight go again. I thought it would look good if I let that fight go through again. But I didn’t have a very good camp, that was the honest thing.”
The loss to Peña was the first for Nunes in seven years. She has successfully defended both the bantamweight title and the featherweight title seven times before this submission loss. A professional fighter since 2008, Nunes has had many training camps, but she knew that something was not right during this last one. As a professional, she felt that the fight needed to go on regardless of the circumstances.
“I tried to put in my head that I was ready, that I was 100 percent but I was lying to myself. As a fighter, it’s a war and I want to fight,” Nunes said. “I’m going to do that, I’m going to fight, whatever if I have an injury. But at this level, you cannot do those stupid moves. I paid for it.”
Since the loss, Nunes has left her longtime gym, ATT in Florida, and moved into her own space in the hopes of creating her own team. This upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter has not yet been filmed, so the date for the rematch is not yet determined at this point. Peña got her start in the UFC as a cast member of TUF and now comes full circle as a coach. The last time two women coached TUF was season 23 when Joanna Jędrzejczyk and Cláudia Gadelha were coaches. This season will feature men’s heavyweights and women’s flyweights.
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