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LAS VEGAS — Julianna Peña stopped Amanda Nunes by submission with a rear bare choke successful the 2nd circular astatine UFC 269 connected Saturday night, claiming the bantamweight rubric from the long-reigning two-division champion successful 1 of the biggest upsets successful caller UFC history.
Charles Oliveira besides defended his lightweight rubric for the archetypal clip with a third-round stoppage triumph implicit Dustin Poirier by lasting rear bare choke successful the main event.
Peña (11-4) was a 10-1 underdog against the vaunted Nunes, wide considered the top combatant successful the past of women’s mixed martial arts. Nunes had won 12 consecutive fights since 2014 and reigned simultaneously atop the 135-pound bantamweight and 145-pound featherweight divisions for 3 years.
After Nunes mostly dominated the archetypal circular with 2 knockdowns and superior striking, Peña shockingly wounded Nunes with punches successful a slugfest commencement to the 2nd round. Peña past got Nunes to the ground, got her backmost and forced the champion to pat retired with a choke astir her cervix with 1:38 left.
“It feels crazy,” Peña said. “I decidedly expected to win, but the satellite is my oyster.”
Peña had won conscionable 2 of her 4 fights implicit the past 5 1/2 years, and the Spokane autochthonal got the rubric changeable arsenic 1 of the fewer morganatic 135-pound fighters that Nunes hasn’t already beaten.
Nunes was warring for lone the 3rd clip successful 2 years aft making 2 featherweight defenses since her astir caller defence of her bantamweight loop successful December 2019. Few opponents had adjacent fixed her a stiff situation since her 2nd triumph implicit existent flyweight champ Valentina Shevchenko by divided determination successful 2017.
Nunes is astir definite to beryllium granted a rematch with Peña, which could impact the UFC plans of Kayla Harrison, the two-time Olympic judo golden medalist who has gone 12-0 successful the Professionals Fighters League since taking up MMA successful 2018. Harrison, a promotional escaped agent, attended UFC 269 and appeared to beryllium conscionable arsenic shocked arsenic the remainder of the assemblage by Peña’s win.
After Peña’s upset, Oliveira (32-8, 1 no-contest) survived a unsmooth combat with Poirier (28-7, 1 no-contest) to amended to 10-0 with 9 stoppage victories since 2017.
Poirier battered the champ with punches successful the archetypal circular and knocked him down twice, but Oliveira took power connected the crushed successful the 2nd circular with a bid of vicious elbows. He finished the combat with 3:58 near successful the 3rd by attaching himself to Poirier’s backmost and forcing him to pat portion lasting up.
Oliveira yet claimed the loop past May successful his 28th UFC combat — the longest hold for a rubric successful the promotion’s past and the culmination of an epic travel by a Brazilian seasoned who overcame poorness and puerility unwellness to go an elite jiu-jitsu practitioner and mixed martial artist.
Oliveira acceptable the UFC grounds for stoppage victories by beating Michael Chandler with punches, and his decorativeness of Poirier accrued the grounds to 18.
Poirier already had a spectacular 2021 with his 2 victories implicit Conor McGregor, erasing the vaunted erstwhile champion’s winning mystique and making 2 tremendous paychecks for decisive stoppage wins. Poirier’s lone different nonaccomplishment successful his past 11 fights since 2016 was to Khabib Nurmagomedov, who took distant Poirier’s interim lightweight rubric earlier retiring undefeated.
Earlier astatine T-Mobile Arena, New Zealand flyweight Kai Kara-France stopped erstwhile bantamweight champ Cody Garbrandt with a bid of monolithic strikes successful the archetypal round.
Former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz besides rallied for a unanimous determination implicit Pedro Munhoz. The oft-injured Cruz hadn’t won since 2016 earlier claiming back-to-back victories successful 2021.
Australian heavyweight imaginable Tai Tuivasa won his 4th consecutive bout by stoppage with a convulsive second-round knockout of Brazil’s Augusto Sakai. Tuivasa celebrated by climbing atop the cage and doing a shoey from idiosyncratic else’s shoe, and helium repeated the solemnisation connected his mode retired of the arena.
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