LAS VEGAS — UFC president Dana White doesn’t want to see featherweight and bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes retire. After all, never before has the promotion seen a champ-champ continue to mow down opponents while retaining both belts.
And Nunes’ one-sided victory over Felicia Spencer in defense of her 145-pound title in the main event of UFC 250 was a demonstrative statement Nunes remains well in her prime.
“I hope she doesn’t (retire),” White told reporters, including MMA Junkie, following Friday’s UFC on ESPN 11 weigh-ins at the UFC APEX. “She’s one of my favorite people ever, and coming off the performance that she put on, I think that the beautiful thing was she came out of the (Germaine) de Randamie fight and everybody was like ‘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’d hate to think that she’d want to retire. But if that’s true and that’s where she’s at right now, then she probably should.”
The problem is, while the bantamweight division has remained highly competitive, the UFC has barely been able to find enough fighters to build out featherweight. Nunes’ win over Spencer, after all, came a full year and a half after she defeated Cris Cyborg for the belt, and with the exception of Meaghan Anderson, there’s no one else on the company roster at the moment who can be plausibly matched up with Nunes.
So if Nunes’ bout with Spencer turns out to be her last, than there’s a real chance it will also go down as the final UFC women’s featherweight title bout. White indicated the bantamweight division would continue, but it would likely be the end of the line for 145 pounds.
“Probably not,” White said when asked about 145. “I literally just told the guys the other day to build that division up. Let’s start signing girls, start building the division and now the girl’s is talking about retirement, so apparently we gotta got on the same page and figure this thing out.”
Dana White: If Amanda Nunes retires, women's featherweight division probably done
