UFC 249 Dealt Blow With Nunes Pullout
In the quiet sports world at the moment, we’re looking at a lot of stories that potentially point to when we might see things come back. It’s still an ongoing thing where there are no clear cut answers, merely speculation and various avenues, thought processes and concepts to try and create options to get things back on track. One sport that has tried to get off the ground only to be halted previously isn’t letting those starts and stops impede their efforts to get things going as soon as possible.
The UFC has attempted to get a couple cards off the ground only to be derailed by different issues. UFC President Dana White went as far as securing a private island to try and get cards going. As it stands, the proclaimed “UFC Fight Island” is expected to be ready for action by mid to late May. There was a card that was slated to go off on April 18 on a Native American reservation in California but it was postponed after pressure from both ESPN and their parent company, Disney. That barely slowed White, who almost immediately announced that he planned on having his next card on May 9 from a currently undisclosed location.
The card is expected to be a pretty stacked card and was slated to have three title matches, including an interim lightweight title fight between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje. Eventually, the plan is to have Ferguson fight current titleholder Khabib Nurmagomedov. Of course, that has been the plan on nearly half a dozen occasions only to have something eventually derail the fight. The latest attempt to have that fight was supposed to be for UFC 249 in Brooklyn on that April 18 card. Of course, in March, the Barclays Center was declared unavailable due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was scheduled to carry on nonetheless. Nurmagomedov officially pulled out of the fight on April 6 as he had gone home to Dagestan, Russia after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Ferguson and Gaethje are still in line for headlining the card for May 9, UFC did take a hit as one of their other linchpin title matches seems to have been scuttled. Two-division champion, Amanda Nunes, was expected to defend her featherweight title against Felicia Spencer on the card. Instead, she announced that she wouldn’t be stepping into the Octagon as she wanted to have a full training camp in order to prepare for the fight. When asked about the fight, she made the following statement:
“Actually, I'm not fighting May 9. I'm going to fight, [but] I don't know yet. I don't think this is the right time for me right now to fight. Let this coronavirus pass a little bit so I can at least have a full camp. We can maybe see around June, [but] let's see what is going to happen. But I'm not fighting [May 9]."
From the betting perspective, this takes a pretty big fight off the books. Nunes is 19-4 in the octagon and owns a pair of titles. Spencer has recorded an 8-1 mark in her career with her lone defeat a decision loss at the hands of Cris “Cyborg” Justino last year. She was coming in off a decisive TKO win over Zarah Fairn Dos Santos in February and seemed to have some momentum heading into this fight. With that said, Nunes was a hefty -380 favorite with Spencer a +310 underdog in the early odds from Vegas sportsbooks for the fight.
With Nunes out of the mix, it seems like some of the luster for this card has been dulled a bit. While the Ferguson/Gaethje fight is still on as the headliner bout, it’s going to be tough to replace the matchup featuring Nunes. She’s considered the best pound for pound female fighter in UFC and had pushed into the top five of the overall pound for pound rankings before they were split for men and women. It’s unclear if Spencer will fight in a different contest on the card or not.
Does the loss of Nunes defending her title impact your potential betting on the card?