The Film Room: Amanda Nunes
UFC 232 is now available on Amazon Prime.
Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes has her toughest test to date this weekend when she takes on Cris Cyborg for the featherweight championship in the co-main event of UFC 232.
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Nunes is known for her pressuring style, but what makes her leading
attacks so interesting is her patience while being the aggressor.
Generally, aggressive fighters are prone to elite counter strikers,
but Nunes knows how to intelligently pressure opponents while never
putting herself out of position to defend. Notice how she uses
feints and misdirection before every combo and is always looking to
take a dominant angle. These feints allow her to set up the strikes
she’s actively throwing, but it also allows her to read reactions
to these strikes, so she can set traps for them later in the fight.
Something else to notice about her leading attacks is how she
always takes an angle to her left or right to set up whatever she
is throwing. In the open guard she favors taking an angle to her
left to set up the right straight, and in the open guard, she likes
to take inside angles to land her jabs and right hooks.
Nunes’ light bounce allows her to cover distance quickly, which makes her an adequate counter striker. She is usually the leading attacker, but she does have a beautiful dipping counter right hook and will occasionally counter with a leg kick, which is rarely seen in MMA but very effective and popular in kickboxing and muay Thai. This weekend she takes on one of the most aggressive fighters in the UFC so it will be interesting to see how she has developed her counters around Cyborg’s usual style.
Similar to her opponent this weekend, Nunes is predominantly a striker but has a very underrated grappling game. Although she has been controlled on the ground by the likes of Valentina Shevchenko and Cat Zingano, she has shown to have great transitional grappling to get back to her feet or sweep the opponent. She usually only goes for takedowns when they are wide open and won't shoot for doubles and singles from a mile away, but once she gets opponents to the ground she has tremendous ground and pound and has dominated opponents as such.
As stated, Nunes is always looking for ground-and-pound once the fight hits the mat and she rarely concerns herself with improving the position. Just like her opponent, Nunes knows technical prowess on the ground means nothing if she can simply posture up and throw punches until the ref steps in.
What makes this matchup so intriguing outside of the belt and the status of being the greatest of all time is how similar their styles are. Both are predominantly pressuring strikers who like to back the opponent to the cage and unload with flurries to the head and body and both have proven they can dominate on the ground. Although the public dollar has been placed predominantly on Cyborg, the odds suggest this will be the closet of her career and I truly believe this one could go either way.
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