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Raquel Pennington isn’t stunned in the least about Amanda Nunes teasing a potential return to the octagon.
Following Pennington dropping the bantamweight title via a controversial split decision to Julianna Peña at UFC 307, the now two-time titleholder ignored fellow event winner Kayla Harrison, and went right for a trilogy fight with Nunes. The third meeting was booked for UFC 289 in June 2023, but a Peña injury led to Nunes defending the belt against Irene Aldana in the main event — which Nunes successfully did via lopsided decision before announcing her retirement.
Nunes since released a comment on social media, tagging UFC CEO Dana White, asking him to call her. If “The Lioness” returns to the fold, Pennington will be cheering her on.
“Obviously Amanda and I have fought but we’ve known each other since Invicta,” Pennington told MMA Fighting. “I’ve always supported her career, she’s supported mine, my family supports her and stuff, and then her and Nina [Nunes] are two of Tecia [Pennington’s] closest friends. So every time we go to Florida, we’re down at their house. I mean, we stay with them half of the time and the kids get to play together, and whatnot.
“They’re competitors — both of them — and so it’s not just even Amanda. I feel like it’s something that everybody’s known for a long time, and as an athlete, like, when do you know the right time to walk away? This is a conversation that I actually have with other athletes and they’re like, ‘I don’t know, I guess we’ll figure it out,’ and you see a lot of these athletes, they’re like, ‘OK, like we’re good.’ And they’re in that phase in their life and then all of a sudden, it’s like, they’re natural born competitors.
“I’ve had conversations with both Amanda and Nina, and they’re just like, ‘Yeah, we’re done for now’ type thing, and ‘we might be coming back,’ and of course, Amanda, she’s been very successful with everything. She’s known as the GOAT and she’s done amazing things, and she loves to shut everybody’s mouth. And so you had Kayla come in and she’s made the comment about the fact that she would love to just shut Kayla up, [and] we all know how she feels about Julianna, and she said that if Julianna ever got the belt back, she was gonna come back and beat the brakes off of her. I feel like I can’t speak for Amanda, but I’m not surprised with her video at all just knowing her as a person, knowing her as a competitor and I’m sure the world would absolutely love to see her back.”
Nunes would be a welcome addition to the current bantamweight slate, which is certainly more above the radar following Nunes’ retirement. With Pennington finding her stride, along with Peña, Harrison, Vieira, and more in the mix, one of the promotion’s most shallow divisions in terms of numbers has gotten a shot of depth and excitement.
Pennington sees it too, but believes recognition has been deserving for some time. Now the dominoes are falling in the right place for the division to shine.
“It’s kind of like when Ronda left, you [had’ Amanda who [had] started a very successful run for herself, but the world was just absolutely hating on her,” Pennington sait. “It was just like, ‘Oh, Ronda left, like, this division sucks.’ And then all of a sudden, Amanda just completely took over and it’s like, ‘OK, Amanda left, this division sucks.’ The world has a hard time when it comes to change initially, but the women’s bantamweight division actually has a lot of talent.
“That’s why even with the matchup between Ketlen and Kayla, like, I thought it was extremely disrespectful to not give Ketlen any credit. She’s a very talented fighter. She packs a punch. It’s a different ball game. Women are in this division for a reason, and so it’s really interesting to see. It was really cool that they put some of the top fights on the card, so that way the world can actually see a lot more talent that’s there.
“There’s talent here and I feel like the division definitely needs a lot more credit.”
Ilia Topuria | Photo By Oscar J. Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images
Ilia Topuria will wear custom shorts in his first defense of the UFC featherweight championship at next weekend’s UFC 308 in Abu Dhabi, Spanish news outlet Marca revealed Saturday.
The red-and-yellow shorts, with bulls on the side, will be worn by Topuria when he enters the cage to face former champion and current “BMF” champion Max Holloway in the main event. UFC 308 takes place at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi and airs live on ESPN+ pay-per-view.
Check out the shorts below.
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Topuria (15-0) has won seven in a row since joining the UFC in October of 2020, including a vicious second-round knockout of Alexander Volkanovski to claim the 145-pound championship at UFC 298.
Holloway (26-7) has beaten some of the all-time best in the UFC, from Jose Aldo to Anthony Pettis to Frankie Edgar, and once again entered the title picture at 145 pounds by capturing the BMF belt from Justin Gaethje in epic fashion in a lightweight bout at UFC 300 this past April.
Photo By David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile via Getty Images
VanZant hasn’t fought in MMA since 2020, and doesn’t think she’ll ever return due to the risk of injury.
Don’t expect to see UFC fighter turned reality star turned bare knuckle boxer turned OnlyFans model turned Power Slapper Paige VanZant fighting in the cage again.
VanZant is set to return to Dana White’s Power Slap league on Thursday, October 24th when the promotion rolls into Abu Dhabi during UFC 308 Fight Week. She won her first slap-off back in June 2024, earning a unanimous decision win over Christine Wolmarans. Next weekend she’ll face off against Chelsea Dodson, the wife of former UFC flyweight John Dodson.
What she won’t be doing is getting back into MMA. In a new interview with MMA Junkie Radio, VanZant explained why.
“I don’t ever like to say I’m closing the door 100%, but I do see it would be hard for me to go back into MMA,” she said. “Not because I don’t love it, or not because I don’t have a passion for it still. But like I said, I broke my arm five times in my life and four times in basically two years of competing. I had two surgeries on it, and I still have a huge plate that runs the length of my entire forearm.”
“So just going back to that place of risking breaking my arm again and having surgery again and getting set back? I can still have the thrill of competing, and I can still get that rush without putting my body at risk. I’m fine if I break my arm, it’s really just the mental fortitude, I don’t know if I can push through that again. It was a really, really rough few years.”
Now VanZant is satisfied with the rush Power Slap provides, and insists there is a training and development portion to the ‘sport.’
“You can train a little bit,” Paige said. “Like, I let my husband hit me in the face with the pool noodle just so you practice having something coming at your face extremely quickly.”
“And then just trying to figure out a plan for how you’re gonna take it, if it’s best for your body to close your eyes, if it’s best to keep your eyes completely open, if it’s best to follow the slap or follow their hand, to basically try to watch it make impact with your face.”
Paige VanZant’s Power Slap Match#powerslap8 pic.twitter.com/Ye7lREd885
— MMA Mania (@mmamania) June 29, 2024
“Everybody’s body and body reactions are gonna be different,” she concluded. “So just learning what works best for you.”
The hardest part of Power Slap for Van Zant is the ‘no flinching’ rule, which she did several times in her debut and got called on once.
“I think as you see professional fighters coming over — boxing, boxers, MMA fighters — you are gonna see that flinching foul happen,” she said. “Because as much as we don’t want to flinch, it’s our body mechanics. It’s ingrained in our muscle memory.”
Once again, it comes down to training (aka more pool noodles to the face).
“You can flinch forward. You can, like, flinch down and brace, but you just can’t flinch away from the hit. So, it’s a learning process. And for the first one, I think I did absolutely great.”
PVZ vs. Dobson goes down at the Space42 Arena in Abu Dhabi on Thursday, October 24th. Tune into MMAMania.com for all the highlights, plus news from UFC 308 which goes on later that weekend on Saturday afternoon, October 26th.
Francis Ngannou has won a lot of fights. The toughest battle he’ll face for the rest of his life is one that he can only survive, but can’t actually win.
Making his PFL debut just six months after Ngannou’s 15-month-old son Kobe died tragically, the former UFC heavyweight champion was unsure about his future Saturday night. Despite all the accomplishments he racked up over the years, Ngannou just wasn’t the same person after losing his son, and he couldn’t help but question if perhaps his fighting career was over.
“It was my biggest challenge in the way that I wasn’t the person that I used to be,” Ngannou said after his win over Renan Ferreira on Saturday. “Coming into this fight, this fight was also a way for me to find out if I can still fight. If I still have it. Something like that.
“If I can deal with this, the pressure, with the fight week, with the media and everything. We got through [it].”
All of Ngannou’s questions were answered once he got in the cage and delivered a vintage performance after he took Ferreira down early in the opening round and then delivered a vicious ground-and-pound finish. It took him less than four minutes to dispatch the PFL’s top heavyweight and get his first win since beating Ciryl Gane back in 2022.
Ngannou was understandably overwhelmed with emotion after the fight was over as he fought back the tears while dedicating the victory to his son.
While it was a physically dominant performance, Ngannou felt the toughest obstacles he had to overcome before Saturday came down to the mental warfare happening inside his own head.
“It was pretty hard,” Ngannou said. “It was hard at any moment from the beginning to the end, but I think it’s one of those things, you ask yourself is it ever going to be over? You think it might never be over. You just might as well learn how to roll with it, to live with it. Because in certain cases, I would have taken time to grieve but how long would that take?
“I don’t think there’s enough time for me to do that. I don’t think a lifetime would be enough to grieve. Is it just about keep going? It’s a new way of living that I have to learn.”
Enduring and surviving the past six months forced Ngannou to show the kind of strength he didn’t think was possible. Ngannou says nothing could possibly prepare him for what he’s gone through, but he eventually found a way to step out of the darkness into the light.
“They’ve been telling me that I’m tough to the point that I get to believe that I am tough,” Ngannou said. “Then I recently just found out that I wasn’t tough. I wasn’t that tough.
“I’ve seen people going through it, and out of compassion, I’ve been trying to understand how it must feel, but you never get anywhere close to how it feels exactly.”
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