Amanda Nunes has already taken out the best Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has to offer after going on an impressive run that saw her defeat Ronda Rousey, Valentina Shevchenko, Cris Cyborg and Holly Holm, among others.
Now, the current champ-champ might have to look elsewhere to find an opponent should she take out Germaine de Randamie a second time this Saturday night (Dec. 14, 2019) at UFC 245 in Las Vegas, Nevada. And she won’t be from the mixed martial arts (MMA) world.
According to UFC president Dana White, he has had talks with the camp of current WBA, WBO, WBC, IBF, and The Ring Middleweight champion, Claressa Shields, about potentially jumping into the Octagon.
“Claressa Shields is coming,” White told BT Sport via MMA Fighting, about Shields attending Amanda’s title fight against de Randamie.
“She’ll be here Saturday to watch the fight. She’s coming to watch the fight, and I will be honest with you, Claressa Shields’ people and I have talked. I don’t know, we’ll see. We’ve talked.”
“I know they’re both interested in it, too. We’ll see how this whole thing plays out. We have a lot of respect for her, too, and she’s going to come to the fight and should be fun.”
Shields is undefeated (9-0) so far in her professional boxing career, with all but one of those matches being championship bouts. Claressa last defeated Christina Hammer earlier this year to retain her titles and will next face Ivana Habazin for the vacant WBC and WBO light middleweight titles. With a win, Shields will add even more hardware to her already-full trophy case.
Of course, should Shields — a two-time Olympic gold medalist — ever decide to commit to a jump over to the Octagon, it will likely be after an extended period of time of training all aspects of MMA in order to avoid another James Toney catastrophe.