With another dominant championship performance, Amanda Nunes isn’t leaving herself a lot of options for future opponents.
That said, she’s not planning to go the Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather route anytime soon.
While Nunes was working to win a unanimous decision against multiple-time kickboxing world champion Germaine de Randamie at UFC 245, another combat sports star was making a special appearance backstage at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Reigning middleweight (160-pound) boxing champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Claressa Shields spoke to the media on Saturday and she revealed that she had a meeting with UFC President Dana White to discuss the possibility of setting up a fight with Nunes, who holds titles at 135 and 145 pounds and has not suffered a loss in over five years.
The topic was brought to Nunes at the UFC 245 post-fight presser and she offered a stern warning to Shields, should the 24-year-old actually make the jump to MMA.
“She saw tonight,” Nunes said. “I don’t think she’s going to want anything to do with this.”
“If she wants to see me, come to my world. I’m gonna be here,” Nunes continued. “I’m an MMA fighter. She wants to see me, I’m gonna wrestle the s*it out of you and finish you with a jiu-jitsu submission. I want to see how she’s gonna feel.”
Further clarification was later provided to Nunes. According to Shields, the idea would be for Nunes to meet Shields in a boxing match first and then the two would compete in an MMA bout. That suggestion drew an even more incredulous reaction from Nunes, especially when she was told that Shields would want six months to prepare for an Octagon encounter with Nunes.
Nunes doesn’t believe there’s any reasonable time frame that Shields could set for herself to someday deal with the two-division champion’s grappling.
“I’m an MMA fighter, why she want to take me from my sport?” Nunes asked. “If she wants to fight me, come to my world. It doesn’t make any sense. I respect her as a boxer, but I’m an MMA fighter. I don’t like to fight [in boxing]. I like MMA.
“I like what I did today. If she can handle that for five rounds, come see me.”
“Six months to learn how to defend a takedown? Germaine, six years, she didn’t even learn how to defend a takedown,” Nunes added. “You guys saw tonight. Don’t even listen to this girl, guys.”
Watch Shield’s full backstage media scrum below:
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