Amanda Nunes is considered to be the greatest female fighters of all-time. She’s beaten every single person who was the women’s bantamweight or featherweight champion in the UFC.
Nunes doesn’t just win her fights but she either earns a finish or earns a dominant decision. She hasn’t appeared to be in any kind of trouble in a long time, so who has the best chance to end her reign at bantamweight?
Although Nunes’ next fight will most likely be against Felicia Spencer at featherweight, there are some opponents at bantamweight that can give her problems. The likes of Aspen Ladd, Julianna Pena, and Irene Aldana pose problems. But, the person who has the best chance to end her reign is flyweight champion, Valentina Shevchenko.
Shevchenko is currently running out of contenders at flyweight and both have spoken about the trilogy. Even though Nunes won both, although, in the rematch, many believe Shevchenko should’ve been awarded the win.
If they do their trilogy, Shevchenko’s striking and ever-evolving ground game pose so many challenges to Nunes. First off, the flyweight champ is dangerous on her feet with her ability to punch and kick. She has a 51 percent striking accuracy while landing 3.06 significant strikes per minute. She also has a very impressive 63 percent significant striking defense.
In the two fights, we saw the standup was rather even with Shevchenko and Nunes having success. But, since they fought, Shevchenko’s ground game has gotten better where she now lands over two takedowns a fight and lands 55 percent of her takedowns and stuffs 78 percent.
Shevchenko is an all-around fighter who poses a lot of problems for Nunes. She has also fought her twice and had success. So, she now knows what changes are needed to finally defeat Amanda Nunes assuming they fight again.
But, for now, Nunes is focusing on featherweight while Shevchenko is at flyweight. So, it may be sometime before this scrap happens but if it does, Shevchenko appears to be the biggest threat to Amanda Nunes’ throne at 135-pounds.
Do you agree that Valentina Shevchenko has the best chance to end Amanda Nunes’ bantamweight reign?
ICYMI: We already looked at who has the best chance to end the reigns bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight, heavyweight, strawweight, and women’s flyweight.
Stay locked to BJPENN.com over the coming days to see who has the best chance to end every champions reign.
This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 4/27/2020.