Amanda Nunes and Julianna Pena have been suspended indefinitely after their brutal and bloody UFC 277 title fight.
Nunes dominated her rival over five one-sided rounds to win back her bantamweight title seven months after losing it to Pena in one of the sport's biggest upsets. Both women have now been sidelined by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation although the fighters can return early if cleared by a doctor.
In the co-main event, Brandon Moreno defeated Kai Kara-France to become interim flyweight champion with the challengers handed 45 and 60 day bans respectively. Moreno will now eye a fourth fight with long-time rival Deiveson Figueiredo having won one, drawn one and lost the other of there three meetings so far.
UFC president Dana White claimed after Pena's defeat that she had been taken to see a plastic surgeon after suffering a nasty cut on her forehead. But the dethroned champion later revealed she had been given the all-clear. "Tougher than a two dollar steak," she wrote on social media. "Thanks for the love everyone! Just a cat scratch that required a few stitches, no chunks missing, no surgery necessary. Love you all! We’re 1-1 now."
Nunes, meanwhile, has been criticised for claiming she deliberately punished Pena over five rounds rather than finishing the fight early. "I know Julianna’s tough," she said . "I was ready for that. I could’ve finished her, but I wanted to go five rounds with her tonight to prove I was better than her. Tonight proved that [the first fight] was a lucky day for her. If she needed to become a champion like that, she had her time, but now it’s over."
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But welterweight contender Belal Muhammad took to social media to claim Nunes was being "cocky". " There’s moments in the fight where Julianna could have won that fight," he said. " Amanda, I felt like, is getting too cocky. She’s getting too arrogant saying, 'I could have finished her in the first round if I wanted to, but I wanted to go five rounds so I could show her who’s better,' Blah, blah, blah. Get out of here with that. You couldn’t finish her.
"I think Amanda started taking her down in the third, fourth and fifth round because she didn’t want to get caught again on the feet. She knows that Julianna punches hard, her eye was very swollen, she was on crutches leaving. So, she was definitely in a fight. It wasn’t a dominating fight like a lot of people are making it out to be."
