UFC 232: Jones vs. Gustafsson 2: Predictions and Picks

#2 Cris Cyborg vs. Amanda Nunes

Cris Cyborg is looking for her third successful title defence

The co-main event sees a ‘superfight’ between UFC Women’s Featherweight champion Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino, and UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes. Usually I don’t like these kind of champion vs. champion fights as they hold up the respective divisions, but in this case, I don’t mind; Nunes doesn’t have a clear-cut top contender right now and 145lbs is essentially an empty division outside of Cyborg.

Last time we saw Cyborg in fact, she squashed a hugely overmatched opponent in Yana Kunitskaya – a newcomer to the UFC who was also a natural 135lber. Before that, she faced Holly Holm and Tonya Evinger – another two natural 135lbers – which should demonstrate how thin her division actually is.

That makes Nunes a fun challenge for her. ‘The Lioness’ is unbeaten at 135lbs since 2014, with 7 straight victories, and she’s looked fantastic in most of those outings. She’s also a large Bantamweight, meaning the step up to Featherweight shouldn’t prove to be too problematic, unlike Evinger for instance who looked terribly outsized there.

Offensively, Nunes is a great fighter. She hits incredibly hard, chains combinations together standing including some vicious leg kicks, she has strong takedowns and ruthless ground strikes, and she can submit opponents too. Historically, her problem has been with her stamina – unsurprisingly for such a ferocious fighter – and that was largely what cost her in her last loss to Cat Zingano.

On the surface – given she’s won two 5-round fights in the past 18 months – you’d have thought that stamina issue was fixed, but that may not be the case. Nunes didn’t gas out against Valentina Shevchenko or Raquel Pennington, but that was because she changed her style and became much more economic – using bursts of offense instead of the wild assault she once did – but much less dangerous in the process.

When Alistair Overeem became more economic for instance, he became more dangerous in a lot of ways – but that’s because Overeem carries one-shot kill power. Nunes hits hard, but overwhelming her opponents with a wild assault was always her forte, not one-punch knockouts. So that trend is somewhat worrying for the Brazilian.

Cyborg has also changed up the berserker style we once saw in StrikeForce, but that hasn’t made her any less effective. She’s a far more technical striker than she once was, as we saw when she outpointed noted striker Holly Holm last year – that fight saw her absorb Holm’s best shots before working out her timing and range to snipe at ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ with excellent counter-strikes.

For me, the key to beating Cyborg is a two-fold problem; firstly an opponent would need to be able to stand up to her striking power – which Holm did, for instance – but they’d also need to be able to hurt her back, which has proven to be a near-impossible task for all of her opponents, largely because they’re simply not big and strong enough to do so.

So does Nunes have that kind of power? She might, but then she took an age to put away an overmatched Pennington, she couldn’t really stun Shevchenko in their second fight, and the only woman she’s put away quickly with strikes recently was Ronda Rousey, who clearly had a vulnerability in that area.

Throw in the fact that Nunes was beaten down on the ground by Zingano and Cyborg is also has a powerful takedown and vicious ground-and-pound, and I just can’t see ‘The Lioness’ having many advantages here. Even if she comes out all-guns-blazing as she once loved to do, it could play into Cyborg’s counter-striking game. And if she doesn’t, then she’s likely to find herself technically outgunned anyway.

Whether Cyborg sticks around after this fight is unknown; she’s mooted leaving the UFC but I don’t think their notorious ‘champion’s clause’ would allow her to move to a competitor like Bellator, but I think she retains her title here for sure.

The Pick: Cyborg via third round TKO