UFC 289 Beforemath: What Improvements Should We See from Amanda Nunes?

What do you like to see out of a champion so dominant that her only challenger is truly herself and her dedication? What to do when simply winning isn’t enough anymore and domination is the goal now? Amanda Nunes faces that problem. At 22-5, Nunes has been just short of perfect in her mixed martial arts career with the UFC. She returns this weekend to face Irene Aldana as the headliner of UFC 289. While she did lose in December of 2021, Nunes redeemed herself by avenging the embarrassing loss to Julianna Pena and reclaimed her long-held title. Now, in the wake of Pena pulling out from their trilogy bout, Nunes takes on Aldana on relatively short notice.

In today’s edition of Beforemath, our weekly preview of the upcoming UFC fights, we are looking at Aldana’s path to victory against an opponent as dominant as Amanda Nunes. We will also be looking at Nunes. Our goal there will be to see what improvements we would like to see from a champion whose reign includes wins over every women’s bantamweight champion in history.

Biggest Test of Her Life

Toppling a giant like Nunes is a tough go for Aldana, but she has the opportunity to join the Mexican wave of champions that include Brandon Moreno, interim champion Yair Rodriguez and her Alexa Grasso. Aldana has the toughest mountain to scale than all of them; even more so than Grasso’s win over Valentina Shevchenko. Nunes did beat Shevchenko twice, after all. Aldana’s skills do not match up with Nunes that well. She has great hands with good power; Nunes has more power and is content to sit in the pocket to go lick-for-lick with someone. Just ask Cristiane Justino how that turned out. Aldana will not want to stay in the pocket with Nunes, something that Nunes will want to do almost the entire fight.

For Aldana, not exiting to the rear is of the upmost importance. Nunes’ seek and destroy mentality thrives when an opponent backs straight up. With the rigid ring we watch fighters fight in, you can only go so far back before you hit a hard, unforgiving wall and cannot back up any further. In a boxing ring, you can lean out beyond the ropes. But the cage is taller than everyone in the UFC except Alexander Volkov and leaning out is not possible. Aldana is going to want to move horizontally, or side to side. This will keep her off the center line and circling away instead of backing straight up where Nunes can walk her down.

Against Kamaru Usman, it was essential for Leon Edwards to stay off of the fence and out of harm’s way less he get pressed against the fence and ground down. In their trilogy fight, Edwards made it a habit of exiting out the side instead of to the rear. (1) Usman looked to pressure Edwards in all three of his fights. Edwards would then (2) shift to his right (or left) and Usman would think he had Edwards where he wanted him. He would throw that jab out and look to line the cross up that knocked out Jorge Masvidal. Edwards would (3) shift to the opposite side and with Usman swinging for the fences at where Edwards was, Edwards was free to exit and land a left on Usman.

Aldana is also good in transition when it comes to grappling exchanges. She uses the threat of a submission to create space and to scramble up from disadvantageous positions. But, as we saw with the Macy Chiasson fight, if Nunes establishes control on the ground, Aldana is essentially dead in the water. Aldana cannot afford to let Nunes get on top of her and start to pound her out.

Lastly, we’ve seen Irene Aldana go to the body consistently once in her UFC career. That fight was in September of 2019 against Vanessa Melo. To beat Nunes you need her tired. That is something Shevchenko didn’t do but Cat Zingano and Juliana Pena did do. Going to the body early and often will reap massive benefits for Irene Aldana as the five round fight goes on.

Ultimately, this is Aldana’s opportunity to defeat Nunes. With all these things mentioned as well as straight punching and a couple other small things, Aldana might have a chance to join the Mexican wave of UFC champions.

The Lioness Roars

Nunes caught a lot of flak over losing to Pena the way she did at UFC 269. How could something as simple as a dipping jab befuddle a champion as strong in the striking department as Nunes? Certainly, in comparison to the rest of her division, Nunes is heads and shoulders above the rest not named Valentina Shevchenko, but she was beat up and lost her title. Today we will not be looking at diagrams of Amanda Nunes. Instead, we’re going to be pulling in diagrams from things I would like to see from her this fight.

While she regained the title, many are still critical of Nunes for not being as dominant as she once was. Maybe she’s regressed or become uninspired, or maybe the game caught up. With a dominant win over Aldana at UFC 289, Nunes can regain some of that respect of her more critical detractors. It won’t be in one fell swoop, but Nunes can continue the path. What is the most efficient way to do this? Smash out Aldana like she did “Cyborg?” That’s just more of the same that saw her lose to Pena in the first place. Instead, Nunes needs to improve and show improvement as a new, scarier Amanda Nunes. I’m not asking for much too wild, just natural additions to her game that will make her better.

via GIPHY

Let’s start off with the shoulder roll. The shoulder roll, as seen in the animation above, was made popular by Floyd Mayweather in modern boxing. When Nunes fought Pena the first time, Nunes was beat because she couldn’t stay off the center line and ate some stiff jabs coming her way. This in conjunction with meeting fire with fire poorly. This wobbled and tired out Nunes and cost her the title. To combat this, instead of learning to move her head, Nunes switched from southpaw to orthodox. It’s not the wrong way of doing things, sure. But doing this is like drinking all of the water out of a swimming pool when all she had to do was put on a patch to stop the leak. Nunes didn’t move her head in a traditional sense.

With the shoulder roll, Nunes will want to tuck her chin behind the lead shoulder to let Aldana’s power shots bounce off of her shoulder as she rolls with the punch. The lead hand goes down and that protects the body and provides cover for the jab should she want to counter. The right hand of Nunes is high and there to guard from the lead hook and to parry the jab. I don’t expect Nunes to become Mayweather by any stretch of the imagination. All I am asking for is some genuine effort of improvement that could really “wow” me as someone who likes to see new things out of fighters.

In fact, I will even settle for actual head movement of any kind from Nunes at UFC 289. Nunes is a power puncher in every sense of the word. Moving her head can open up shots that would provide her with new looks that could help her reign over her division for another five years. If the game is catching up to you, it’s a good idea to get to sprinting to open your lead up a slight bit more.

For this, we will toss it over to everyone’s favorite Georgian featherweight: Ilia Topuria. Against Bryce Mitchell, Topuria would bob his head side to side (1 & 2) as he advanced on Mitchell. Bobbing your head like this opens up strikes like (3) the rear uppercut. But moving her head isn’t good enough. We saw Jessica Andrade do that against Rose Namajunas in their rematch. Andrade didn’t do much with it and was beat that way by split decision. Nunes should look to build off of her blows and chain her punches together. Finishing off his sequence, Topuria uses the natural positioning from the rear uppercut to follow up with a (4) lead hook. Notice how his left hand in frame three connects to the natural motion of frame four and how that naturally loads up (5) the right overhand. Lastly, I want to see a more efficient Nunes in the clinch against Irene Aldana. We know once you get control of Aldana on the ground, it’s a one-way trip to pound town, but outmuscling Aldana will wear on the gas tank of Nunes. Efficiency in the clinch is the name of the game. And to look at that, we will toss it over to Olympic gold medalist and former two-division UFC champion Henry Cejudo.

Cejudo has always been incredible in the clinch. From his run in the Olympics to his recent loss to Aljamain Sterling, Cejudo has terrorized some of the best in the world in this area. In the diagram above, we actually see two instances of Cejudo using the inside trip against Sterling and Demetrious Johnson. The numbers will apply to both sides of the diagram. (1) Cejudo will wind up in a clinch in some manner or another. These two examples are off of stuffed takedowns. Cejudo locks his hands or grabs the whizzer. Off the grab, he will step in between his opponent’s legs and (2) reap the inside of their leg. He will then (3) wrench Sterling and Johnson over the leg and to the mat for two points.

Being efficient in the clinch is a missing part of Nunes’ game. She is accustomed to being stronger than everyone else so muscling her opponents is usually all she needs to do. Instead, I want to see Nunes with a little more finesse, both in the striking department and in the grappling should she decide to take the fight there.

Chaining punches together and working in the clinch like this is no easy task and takes years of practice. Nunes isn’t going to just be able to read Beforemath and put this together in three days’ time. She will need to be putting in the real, valuable work to become a better fighter to better the sport of MMA for women.