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Valentina Shevchenko has accused Amanda Nunes of copying her stand-up game in the latter's title win over Julianna Pena at the UFC 277 headliner. It appeared to Shevchenko that 'The Lioness' opted to "fully copy" her striking game while fighting a superior grappler in Pena. Not one to usually offer her takes on social media, Shevchenko wrote on Twitter:
Watching the event in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Shevchenko could be issuing a subtle callout for a trilogy bout against Amanda Nunes with her latest tweet. The two met for the first time at UFC 196 in 2016 where 'Bullet' suffered a unanimous decision loss.
A year later, Shevchenko suffered a controversial split decision loss in their rematch at UFC 215 in 2017, this time with the bantamweight title on the line.
Despite her upset loss against Pena in the first outing, Nunes was a heavy favorite going into her title rematch against 'The Venezuelan Vixen'. 'The Lioness' justified the odds, knocking down her opponent four times within the first two rounds.
Amanda Nunes dominantly outclassed the champion on the feet, splitting her open with elbows and also managed to take down the grappling savant several times. 'The Lioness' regained her title with a dominant unanimous decision win with the scorecards reading 50-45, 50-44, 50-43.
Julianna Pena believes the UFC women's flyweight division was created because Valentina Shevchenko couldn't defeat Amanda Nunes
Amanda Nunes was hoping to regain double champ status going into her banatmweight title fight against Julianna Pena. Moreover, 'The Lioness' had mentioned that she'd like to go back to defending her featherweight throne after the bout with Pena.
However, Pena doesn't see an opponent worthy of a title fight at 145 lbs. According to 'The Venezuelan Vixen', the bantamweight division is the most stacked women's division in the UFC.
Pena also believes that the flyweight division was created because Shevchenko came up short against Nunes on two occasions. The 32-year-old recently told Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports:
“For the most part, the [145-pound] division — which has two people in it, honestly I really can’t name more than two — it’s just girls in ‘35 that don’t want to cut weight so then they just move up to ‘45. Then they had to create a whole other division at 125 because Valentina [Shevchenko] couldn’t beat Amanda two times, so then they went and cut weight and created a division for her to move down to 125. The real fights, the best fights are at 135.”
Watch Pena's interview below:
