If Amanda Nunes were to retire, that would probably signal the end of the UFC women’s featherweight division.
That’s according to UFC president Dana White who was talking about the possibility of Nunes retiring. The “Lioness” most recently defended her women’s featherweight title in a dominant unanimous decision victory over Felicia Spencer earlier this month at UFC 250.
It further solidified her case of being the greatest female fighter of all time and following the victory, Nunes contemplated retirement as she had achieved everything she set out to do in the sport.
While White is all for fighters retiring if that’s what’s on their mind, Nunes is an exception who he hopes continues to stay on and defend her titles.
“I hope she doesn’t,” White told reporters on Friday when asked about Nunes potentially retiring. “She’s one of my favorite people ever and coming off the performance that she just put on, I think that the beautiful thing was she came out of the [Germaine] de Randamie fight and everybody was like, ‘oh, she looked human,’ this, that, and all the critics were all over her. She fought arguably the best female striker of all time, beat her, and she looked human in that fight, and then she came out and put a statement on her last performance, she looked incredible and put on an absolute clinic against one of the toughest women I’ve ever seen in my life.
“And after a performance like that, I would hate to think that she would want to retire. But if that’s true and that’s where she’s at right now, then she probably should.”
White: Likely No More Featherweight Division If Nunes Retires
As a result of her win over Spencer, Nunes defended her featherweight title for the first time and became the first female fighter to defend two different belts.
The reason it took so long for a featherweight title defense — given that she won the strap back in December 2018 — was the lack of 145-pound contenders among other things.
And although White was planning on building the division up, things will likely change if the Brazilian does end up retiring.
“Probably not,” White added if when asked if there would still be a featherweight division in a post-Nunes world. ” … I literally just told the guys the other day to build that division. Let’s start signing girls, let’s start building that division and now my girl’s talking about retirement, so apparently, we gotta get on the same page and figure this thing out.”
That doesn’t sound like good news for Megan Anderson or Spencer.
