Ronda Rousey and Amanda Nunes finally got together Thursday afternoon during the ceremonial weigh-ins for their women’s bantamweight title fight at UFC 207.
The ensuing staredown was brief and routine. Rousey adopted her traditional wide stance and got right up in Nunes’ face. Nunes just stared back, without betraying an inch of give to the fighter who once seemed as though she might retire from the Octagon undefeated.
There was no physical tussle, as there had been before Rousey’s disastrous loss to Holly Holm at UFC 193 in November 2015. There was no over-the-top screaming session, like her weigh-in opposite Bethe Correia before UFC 190 in August 2015.
When it ended, Rousey turned and strode immediately off the stage, just as she’d done the first time the two fighters faced off at a media event more than six weeks ago.
Aside from the fact Nunes climbed on the scale wearing a rubber lion mask, the encounter was only memorable because it was the first time we had seen Rousey and Nunes together—or Rousey really at all—leading up to Friday’s scrap.
The champ @Amanda_Leoa battles former champ @RondaRousey THIS FRIDAY at #UFC207! @Reebok pic.twitter.com/hKiO2NzDtC
— #UFC207 (@ufc) December 29, 2016
Prior to the staredown, the woman who had spent most of her career as the UFC’s biggest star had kept a bizarrely low profile. She showed her face for the first time during fight week at Thursday morning’s official weigh-ins when she walked in, hit her mark at 135 pounds and walked out without a word.
Aside from that brief glimpse, reporters and fans had gotten nothing from Rousey ahead of UFC 207. As she greeted her long-awaited comeback by imposing a strange, personal media blackout, company brass also kept Nunes away from the fight-week press events.
Why? That's unclear, though the new champion said she didn’t mind.
“It’s good for me,” Nunes said during one of her few media appearances, via the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I don’t like to do a lot of interviews. I like to train and then step in the cage and do my job.”
That, obviously, is the customary response from a consummate professional like Nunes.
As MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz detailed this week, she comes from a fighting family. She grew up battling (and sometimes sleeping) in gyms in Brazil, where she was often the only woman and where her ferocity earned her the nickname The Lioness.
Nunes adopting an uncaring, no-nonsense attitude about Rousey refusing to lift a finger to promote their fight is exactly what we'd all expect.
But honestly? It’s big of her.
A person with a less generous spirit might have been upset she had been denied any real, legitimate championship moment this week. Without the usual pomp and circumstance of a press conference or open workouts, it doesn't feel as though we've seen much of her.
Nunes didn't even get to sit on the dais with the belt in front of her and field softball questions from the media. If you need to know how important those visuals can be, just ask Conor McGregor.
Indeed, the festivities leading up to UFC 207 should have been among the highlights of Nunes' entire professional career, but with Rousey MIA and the champion remanded to the sideline, the build for this card puttered along without creating much of a wake.
Uneventful was the word for it.
A fighter somewhat less clear-eyed than Nunes might have regarded that as a letdown.
It also might end up costing her a lot of money.
As the UFC’s 135-pound champion, she’s set to receive a cut of the proceeds from this pay-per-view. Ordinarily, going up against Rousey in the transcendent superstar’s return bout would be like a license for Nunes to print her own money.
Yet with New Year’s Eve on Saturday, UFC 207 is scheduled for an unorthodox Friday night time slot. With Rousey taking a pass on doing any promotion, it’s possible the PPV buyrate will suffer as a result.
Here’s how MMA Fighting's Shaun Al-Shatti described the mood in a column published Thursday morning just a few hours before Rousey and Nunes finally met face to face:
For the first time in a long time, the pageantry of fight week has seemingly been replaced by dead air. The mainstays of the UFC’s promotional routine — open workouts, pre-fight press conferences, monolithic staredowns — are nowhere to be found on the Las Vegas Strip. Instead, they have been replaced by murmurs and whispers, 10-second sound bytes and swiped photos of the ghost that MMA has been missing for 13 months.
That dead air mostly described Wednesday’s official media day. Without Nunes or Rousey around, UFC 207’s undercard fighters were forced to do the heavy lifting of trying to sell this event to the public.
Trash talk between co-main eventers Dominick Cruz and Cody Garbrandt garnered some headlines. Former welterweight champion Johny Hendricks made a surly spectacle of his own interview time before missing weight for an undercard fight against Neil Magny. UFC President Dana White even serenaded gathered reporters with a rare scrum—his first since the outspoken executive swore off such appearances a couple of years ago.
It was better than nothing, but Rousey and Nunes remained conspicuous by their absences. Nunes hosted a media lunch last Thursday and managed a few spot interviews this week, but this was perhaps the first time in UFC history that neither combatant in a PPV main event attended the formal pre-fight media events.
If Rousey’s return was meant to be one of the high spots of the organization’s already stellar 2016, this was a weird way to play it.
In fact, it’s worth wondering how many casual fans are even aware it's about to go down:
Re: @ufc 207: simply: any of my friends that are casual fans that would normally get at me about a Rousey fight have no idea it's happening.
— devon sawa (@DevonESawa) December 28, 2016
Yet somehow Nunes has been cool with all of it. If Rousey’s disappearing act was supposed to cultivate some sort of mystique or throw Nunes off her game, it doesn’t seem like the champion is falling for it.
“I don’t know what is wrong with this girl, I’m gonna be honest with you,” Nunes said, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “But if she wants to play this game, she’s playing with the wrong person."
Nonetheless, Nunes has thus far enjoyed little of the promotional shine that normally comes along with fighting Rousey. Despite being the champion, it feels as though Nunes has received less of a push than previous Rousey foes like Miesha Tate, Holm or even Sara McMann.
Even after a breakout 2016 that saw Nunes wrest the title from Tate in the main event of the gala UFC 200, the company’s focus has remained single-mindedly on her opponent.
That’s obvious. That’s to be expected.
Everybody wants to see how Rousey has put herself back together after that aura-shattering loss to Holm a little more than a year ago. But as she abruptly rejects the white-hot glare of the fame she cultivated while amassing six consecutive successful UFC title defenses, Nunes has also been minimized.
That doesn't seem fair or right, and if there is some method to the madness, it's murky at best.
White partially defended the decision to keep Nunes out of the press events to Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole.
“You know how Amanda Nunes becomes a star?” the UFC president said. “Go out and beat Ronda Rousey and I guarantee you that then she’ll be a bigger star than anyone ever thought.”
It's hard to argue with that, though it doesn’t seem to take into account that Nunes might be an even bigger star were she to defeat Rousey on the heels of a weeklong media blitz.
In any case, Nunes will have to wait until Friday night to receive any real coronation in the UFC. If she beats Rousey, maybe the UFC will even let her go to the post-fight press conference.
