It comes but once a year fight fans. It’s international fight week, and once again the UFC are pulling out all the stops with three events in three consecutive days. At the end of the week, and comes the culmination of the events in UFC 200, which plays host to a selection of phenomenal contests. Here, we look at Miesha Tate vs. Amanda Nunes.
One of three title fights on the card, Miesha Tate vs. Amanda Nunes is for the Women’s Bantamweight championship, and marks Tate’s first time defending the title. A fight that the champion comes into with more momentum than she’s ever had in her career.
Previously relegated to being ‘number two or under’ during the reign of Ronda Rousey, Tate’s from-behind-victory over Holly Holm at UFC 196 has pushed her to the pinnacle of the division. Now champion, Tate’s first challenger is the number four ranked Amanda Nunes, someone who she feels isn’t ready for the level of competition she brings.
“She’s never faced anyone like me,” Tate said of Nunes during a recent UFC media lunch. “I also think her mentality, her mental, that’s a big weakness, honestly.
“I don’t think that Amanda really likes to get hit,” Tate said. “I think she thinks she likes to get it, but I don’t think she does. I think she likes to be delivering. And if she’s winning, it’s great. But when she’s not, when she’s put in that spot of adversity, she tends to break. I don’t even know if it’s so much a question of cardio as it is like, how bad does she really want it? So I think there will come a point in the fight where that becomes a question in her mind and it won’t be a question in my mind. Wherever we are — whether we’re on the feet or on the ground — I’m just gonna take it to her.”
It’s an interesting theory.
Nunes comes in after the hardest fought victory of her career against Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 196, a contest in which she didn’t quit, and where she was struck fairly frequently. For Tate to theorize the way she is seems odd when examining that particular performance.
Although, when it comes to being forced to give up, Tate would likely be one of the experts in how not to. In the four bouts leading up to her title fight with Holm, Tate went fifteen minutes in each one. Against Holm, she went just under 25 minutes.
It’s likely, be it via a giving up or through cardio, that the longer the fight goes on it’ll favour the champion. Nunes is an explosive and aggressive brawler, who usually finds her most success in the early stages of fights, coming out with mean intentions early on.
It’s certainly something Tate thinks could be a factor, but it’s not something she’ll be relying on.
“I know that’s a tendency in the past of hers,” Tate said. “It seems that she definitely hits a wall in fights, but I think it would be a really piss poor game plan to just count on someone getting tired. Honestly. So I have to assume that she’s making changes, she’s making those proper adjustments, she’s adding things that she needs to her camp to get her conditioning and cardio where it needs to be.”
UFC 200 takes place on Saturday, July 9 starting at 7pm PT, and the odds currently have Tate as the favourite at +225 to -290 for Nunes.
