Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Amanda Nunes vs Valentina Shevchenko

Here's the match video of Amanda Nunes vs Valentina Shevchenko from last night's UFC show in Edmonton. So we all know this fight was supposed to happen in July and Amanda pulled out the day of the fight due to sinusitis. And in their previous fight, Amanda won by unanimous decision but she ran out of gas in round three. I have covered Amanda's entire career going back to when she was still in Brazil and she's always been a finisher who lacks endurance. I expected her to come out and try to end the fight early. Instead we got five rounds of light sparring. Amanda said afterwards that she wanted to go five rounds to prove that she could do it. WTF????? Where did this idea come from? I noticed that American Top Team (ATT) coaches Mike Brown and Din Thomas were not in Amanda's corner but ATT owner Conan Silveira was. My guess is this nonsense was his idea and Brown and Thomas didn't agree with it. Are these people that thin skinned to respond to criticism with something like that? It's also very risky because you don't leave things to the judges. They could go the other way. Fortunately for Amanda, Valentina did less than her and that's why Amanda won by split decision. I guess the tipping point was when at the end of round five, Valentina attempted the dreaded headlock takedown and gave up her back. That made me laugh. It was a draw up to that point. I gave Amanda round five and I scored it in her favour 48-47. I would have had no problem with Shevchenko winning because it would have served Amanda and Silveira right for pulling this crap in the first place. Of course Valentina thought she won. She just didn't do enough. All she had to do is be more aggressive and Amanda would have had to change her strategy. But she didn't. So Silveira is mostly to blame but so are the fighters. Dumb, dumb, dumb. So there you have it. It was a terrible fight. Check it out for yourself.