Amanda Nunes’ 5 1/2 year round as UFC women’s bantamweight champion is over. Julianna Pena stopped it on Saturday night during UFC 269’s co-main event.
Pena sent Nunes in the second round of their game in Las Vegas, which took place right before the main event of Charles Oliveira-Dustin Poirier. She was suffocated naked behind to end the round at 3:26 of the round.
“I’m not surprised, ma’am,” Pena said in a post-war interview with Joe Rogan at the Octagon as she hugged her daughter. Pena was confident in advance that she would dethrone the champion. “I told you, never doubt me again. Will, strength and determination, it will get you there.”
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Still, the result represents one of the biggest shake-ups in UFC women’s history. Pena (29-6) is an underrated player 6-1 to Nunes 10-1 (21-5), who won the title in July 2016 from Miesha Tate.
“I thought I was going to have to fight longer, like she was going to fight longer, but she exploited,” Pena told Rogan.
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The loss ended Nunes’ 12-match winning streak that began in 2015. She said she wasn’t caught off guard by the way Pena fought.
“Honestly, no surprises,” she tells Rogan in the Octagon. “I know she’s a fighter, I know she’s going to move forward. I know she can get hit and still keep moving forward. Today, I just love to test.”
Nunes still holds the UFC women’s featherweight title.
