UFC: Dana White Talks Amanda Nunes And Plans For A Second Lockdown
UFC president Dana White has revealed that Amanda Nunes’ retirement would ‘probably’ mean the end of the women’s featherweight division. After her victory against Felicia Spencer at UFC 250, ‘The Lioness’ hinted at retirement.
Speaking to the media ahead of UFC Vegas 3 (transcribed by MMA Fighting), Dana was asked about Amanda’s comments and if she were to retire from the sport, would the women’s featherweight division continue.
“Probably not,” the UFC boss responded.
“I literally just told the guys the other day to build that division,” Dana said. “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 out.
“[Nunes] can do whatever she wants to do. She’s the queen. She can do whatever she wants. She’s having a baby, she’s got all these great things going on in her life right now personally and professionally she’s done anything that I’ve ever asked her to do. To go from Ronda Rousey to her, it’s actually been a joy working with the women in that division. I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with Holly Holm’s people, but Holly Holm is one of the nicest human beings on planet earth. Dealing with that division has been awesome.”
Although Dana believes that ‘The Lioness’ has achieved enough in the sport, he is still hopeful that the greatest woman fighter in the history of the sport doesn’t retire yet.
“I hope she doesn’t [retire],” Dana said. “She’s one of my favourite people ever and coming off of the performance that she just put on, I think that the beautiful thing was she came out of the [Germaine] de Randamie fight and everyone was like, ‘She looked human,’ this, that, 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.
“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 that I’ve ever seen in my life. 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.”
Plans For A second Possible Lockdown
The recent reopening of public spaces and the end of lockdown in various states of the US has resulted in a great increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in some states. With the speculations of another complete lockdown being imposed, Dana revealed that he has already started planning for the possibility (transcribed by MMA Junkie).
“I told you guys going into this thing I’m always thinking about what’s next. And one of the frustrating parts about this whole thing is, I keep telling this story, I was telling it again this morning: Four months ago, I could have told you everything about this business, where’s it’s going, where it’s going to happen,” Dana said. “I don’t know now. So all I do is sit around and strategize and try to plan. And I’m planning for a second shutdown, that it will happen again.”
In times of such uncertainty, Dana revealed that he prefers to prepare for the “worst” case scenario.
“I’m always thinking about the worst, what’s the worst thing that can – when you hear [fighters] talking about when they train, they put themselves in the worst positions they can possibly be in, that’s how I look at this business, too. What’s the worst position we can possibly be in? And my number one goal is always I don’t want to lay off any of my employees, and I don’t want fighters sitting inactive and not being able to compete.
“When you’re a professional athlete, you have a very small window of opportunity, a very limited amount of time. You know, we get into all the money s*** and stuff that’s going on right now. Everybody acts like this is a career. This isn’t a career. This is not a career. This is an opportunity. Anything can happen at any given moment. Your knee could pull out. Your back. Your this, your that. COVID-19, who the hell knows what is coming down the pipeline?”
Do you think we’ll see Amanda Nunes fight again?
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