Amanda Nunes vs. Holly Holm co-headlines UFC 239 this July 6, 2019 at the T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada.
One sentence summary
Phil: Hey casual viewer, remember that woman who knocked out Rousey, just try and forget most of the fights she’s had in the meantime
David: Holm (against the) Throne
Stats
Record: Amanda Nunes 17-4 | Holly Holm 12-4
Odds: Amanda Nunes -410 | Holly Holm +330
History / Introduction to the fighters
David: It’s rare for fighters to hit a highwater mark, only to get higher. Figuratively speaking, of course. Nunes was already a champ. Then she took a big risk, moved up to fight Cyborg, and put Rogan and Co. into “OOOOOH, AAAAAH!” mode. I don’t think we learned much in that fight, except how awesome a Brazilian firefight is. Despite the fact that the UFC is slowly getting rid of these awesome things. What I do know is that styles make boring fights, awesome fights, or technical fights. This fight will either go in category one, or category three, and here for it all the same.
Phil: Nunes was always earmarked as a potential champ but was held back by a tendency to gas out and self-destruct. As we’ve noted, it’s not exactly a tendency which has been hugely overcome so much as she’s just learned to avoid it. Her main MO back when she was a contender was quick, final demolitions, and it’s worth noting that pretty much all of her signature wins have followed the same pattern. A consistent round-winner she probably is not, but she’s insanely violent and has enough craft and caution to survive in longer fights.
David: Where Nunes has managed to accomplish the impossible task of getting to the top, and putting a cherry on it, Holm was managed the incredible task of leveling off at an elite level. First there was the hype of her pre-MMA career. Then there was the hype of sticking Rousey in a foot coma. Three losses immediately after should have been the end of her career, but instead she found a way to stay relevant, and rise above the noise of expectation. This fight feels like a completion of her arc; win or lose, she has the opportunity to exceed those expectations without worrying about what happens if she loses.
Phil: The UFC must have been kicking themselves after that Tate fight, where their dreams of a Holm-Rousey rematch started to smoulder. Those dreams burst into flames when they made the subsequent disastrous choice to match her up with Shevchenko, and turned to cold ash when Rousey retired. It feels like everything since has been an attempt to recapture that magic. Throwing Holm at de Randamie in the desperate hope that she could get the featherweight belt, and then doubling down with a shot at Cyborg. “The female Faber” doesn’t quite feel right, but given the UFC’s love for blonde, photogenic whitebread it doesn’t feel entirely wrong either.
What’s at stake?
David: Just reputations, and one belt.
Phil: Nunes is riding incredibly high at the moment, and Holm has settled into a reputation as a combination one-off and spoiler. This isn’t like the Cyborg or de Randamie fights, where there were a lot of people who genuinely thought she was going to win. It’s seen as more of a “there’s no one else” formality, so the hit that Nunes’ stock will take will be correspondingly bigger.
Where do they want it?
David: Recency bias is a funny thing. The last time we saw Nunes in the cage, she murdered the murderer in 51 seconds. It was like Van Damme vs. Vosloo. Just zero regard for safety. But despite Nunes’ finishing ability, she’s fought sixteen rounds over her last six fights. Nunes doesn’t have a huge striking arsenal so much as she has a short selection of strikes she keeps active with a different timber each time she throws. Even in her knockout wins, she’s keeping the violence quotient high with basic one-two’s. Obviously, the problem opponents run into is when they attack her. She casts a quite-literal wide net of pugilism, keeping opponents contained from in-close or afar. She has ridiculous power, but she’s not comfortable unleashing the knuckles of the gods unless blood’s in the water. Maybe this is tied to her cardio history (?). Whatever the case, Nunes is just a fantastic, rock ‘em sock ‘em robot of pressure when pressured. Otherwise she’s a smooth operator with minimal weapons at range, but also minimal need to release said weapons. There are still issues with her game. Lack of head movement, not much in the way of lateral agility, and her predictable offense makes her hittable but these are holes only the truly elite have exposed (well, at least recently).
Phil: Nunes cemented herself as being almost certainly the biggest single hitter in WMMA in that win over Cyborg. I still remember with horror Cat Zingano’s talking about how Nunes’ punches ruined the entire hormonal balance of her body, which is some Fist of the North Star shit if I’m being real. Nothing fancy on the feet- slinging long straight punches and snap kicks, with a leg kick and snap kick to the body to keep the opponent honest. It helps that she has a perfect build for this sport, with wide shoulders and long arms. Like a lot of rangy strikers, she’s not phenomenal defensively, but very few have been willing or able to test that defense in her recent run. Either they run straight into the clinch, where Nunes stiff-arms them back out or (more infrequently nowadays) takes them down into her murderous top control, or they just get scared off by her striking power. I’m still not hugely convinced that she can win a back-and-forth, gruelling fight, simply because we’ve never really seen her do that: her best examples being holding on to survive the first time she fought Shevchenko, and edging out a listless, awful fight in their second bout. Pace still seems like a key, and it’s one which it feels like Holm can exploit... sort of.
David: On the surface, everything about Holm’s game feels like a picket fence. Everything is nice, neat, and symmetrical. Her arsenal is like an Ikea: predictable, but prolonged. She fires a nice straight left at range. Her left leg keeps crime at bay. And in many instances, her combinations are just glorified advertising. They’re like marketing materials if marketing could render you unconscious. Which is to say...Holm’s game never builds to a crescendo. There’s no gameplan except a gameplan. She’s obviously technical. She’s obviously talented. But inside the cage, when it comes time to make a meal of her opponent, she takes the skin off her chicken. This makes her sound bad, and it shouldn’t. It’s easy to forget just how versatile she is despite the fact that she was able to muscle Rousey off of her, and even instigated and successfully put Rousey on her back with some wrestling fundamentals . The issue in recent years is that Holm hasn’t really found the gear. She seems like a good candidate: powerful leg kicks, technical striker, good size, etc. But unless she finds the ability to put together quality attacks into stronger proximity, I don’t suspect we’ll see Holm 2.0.
Phil: Holm is a weird mix of good and bad. She strikes me as being extremely coachable, with a slight problem being that the coaching hasn’t been tremendously good? Her primary weapons are excellent: a surprisingly clean and untelegraphed left hand, and a booming head and body kick. Her problems other than that are not insignificant: she overcommits on footwork, leads with her head over the feet, and tends to flail on every punch she throws other than that left straight. Her cardio is excellent, but it is worth noting that she has often struggled to actually put a pace on her opponents: instead she tends to fill the air around them with volume until they get mentally exhausted enough to walk into something, or just start waiting around to get kicked.
Insight from past fights
Phil: The Cyborg-Holm fight seems instructive: Holm spent a good deal of it rushing Justino against the cage, where she basically just held her in place. It didn’t really work, as Cyborg has excellent cardio, and is far more effective from the clinch than Holm anyway. It might work on Nunes, though! She has the aforementioned tendency to stiff-arm and escape from tie-ups if she can, and she wants to preserve her strength for bursts of violence. It is worth pointing out that this tactic will be dreadful to watch if it works though (and honestly, if it doesn’t work as well- that Cyborg fight was not exactly fun).
David: I’ll add to that and point to Holm against Anderson. She got pieced up and didn’t have a death wish in response. She worked some takedowns, and top control and ended up victorious.
X-Factors
Phil: Nothing springs to mind. Maybe the ongoing deterioration at Jackson-Wink, or the fact that Holm has been doing this for a minute.
David: None, to my mind. They were who we thought they were.
Prognostication
Phil: Nunes has too many ways to win. As she showed against Shevchenko, she can win a terrible low-pace kickboxing bout. She can also inflict major damage on the floor, or off mistakes in general, in a way which Holm just can’t. Holm’s spoiler ways probably keep her in the fight, but there’s also the chance that her fabled durability just fails her at some point. Amanda Nunes by submission, round 3.
David: Holm’s mode of competitiveness is pretty easy to envision. She stays at range, and continues staying there. The Bethe Correia fight was this philosophy at its absolute worst. In this scenario, Holm was the technical acumen to accidentally dictate the pace. It’s not likely, but I suspect Nunes will respect Holm enough to keep this fight from becoming the cakewalk it would be if Nunes just went in there like the guns of the navarone. Amanda Nundes by Decision.
