UFC featherweight and bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes spoke to media members following her first-round knockout over Holly Holm at UFC 239.
Las Vegas, NV – Amanda Nunes continued to build her legacy as the greatest female fighter of all time with a huge head kick knockout against Holly Holm in the co-main event of UFC 239. She told media afterward that her story isn’t ending anytime soon.
“It means a lot. Like I said in all my interviews this weekend, this is about making history. Keep improving and battling all those girls in my division. Once again tonight, I proved it.”
The fight started conservatively, with both fighters feinting in front of each other. This approach from Holm took Nunes by surprise and forced an adjustment.
“I thought Holly was going to move a lot, I thought she was going to be in-and-out, running a little bit, try to clinch me. But she showed up and she stood still there. So I had to do something else. I had to do plan B because my first one was chase her and she showed up different. It was better for me, how she showed up tonight.”
Amanda Nunes finished Holm with a pair of feinted punches then a picture perfect high kick. It was a combination that Nunes had played out in her head many times leading to fight night.
“Honestly, me and my coach Katel [Kubis], we have been doing this for so long. Just this weekend, I was in the hotel room, me and Nina [Ansaroff] started to practice. Like hook, straight, and finish with the head kick. Every time before I slept we were doing it over and over until I thought, ‘I might catch her with this one. I’m going to do this.’ I have the best coaches in the world and we do this over and over. This was something I had all along, but I never had the chance to show it. But tonight was a great night to show it, and I’m very happy about that.”
One fight prior to Nunes’ title defense, her teammate, Jorge Masvidal, set the promotion’s record with a five-second knockout, which certainly inspired the champion.
“He opened it up for us. When I saw that, the energy was through the roof. I thought, ‘I’m going in there and will do the same.’ And I did it. It was awesome.”
Nunes even gave her assessment of Holly Holm’s gameplan and what went wrong with her approach.
“I think the biggest problem with Holly tonight was that she couldn’t find that timing with me. Not even those kicks were able to stop me because she didn’t have the right timing to throw those kicks. She was just throwing them without meaning. That’s it. They didn’t hurt me at all. If she kept doing that, I would have done something else because I started to catch all the timings that I needed to to really finish that fight.”
“I feel like my front kick was the big thing. When I landed that front kick, I saw that she didn’t want that thing again. And I started to work her with my hands because I knew my next kick would land again in the same spot and it happened two or three more times. She was really hurt badly. After I connected with my right hand, she was really odd about it. I saw everything after that.”
Check out the rest of Amanda Nunes’ UFC 239 post-fight press conference above!
