Ufc, fairytale Pena: the reign of Amanda Nunes ends. Oliveira still champion

Charles Oliveira confirms himself as Ufc lightweight champion by beating Dustin Poirier, but it is not just a trivial defense of the title. It is the confirmation that that belt really deserves it after taking it in May against Chandler – it was left vacant after the retirement of Khabib Nurmagomedov – and it is the confirmation that sometimes some stars take a while to shine. Because Oliveira is now cool, she catches mediatically with platinum hair and a professor’s goggle, but she has a very hard and exemplary history that tonight’s match traces a bit. He started by taking the stone punches of the opponent but never suffered them, he ended up on the mat but got up, working Poirier to the body and making himself felt. And in the second round as soon as The Diamond made the mistake of giving him his back, he clung to it like a backpack and closed the grip around the neck of victory. Charles Oliveira calls himself Charles “do Bronx” because he was born and raised in a favela of Guaruja, in Sao Paulo, on the Santos estuary. He survived poverty, hard work and a doctor who at age 7 told him his fate was in a wheelchair due to a rheumatic fever with heart complications. Then a change of treatment made him turn around, followed by the discovery of Jiu-Jitsu. He has been in the UFC for about ten years, but has never been considered more than a craftsman. Between 2015 and 2017 he had lost 4 out of 6 matches and was on the cutting edge, from then on he never lost again. Ten out of ten wins, better and better, constant show and improvement. She has never abandoned her favela: she always lives there – not far away, no longer in the shacks -, she frequents it and helps her. He’ll be back soon, with a belt that glitters even more. But the real surprise of the Ufc night in Las Vegas had come a few minutes earlier.

Surprise

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“The greatest upset in the history of sport”, said Joe Rogan, historic Ufc commentator, who has just entered the octagon after the feat. Because Amanda Nunes, in fact, in recent years has dominated the female mma as rarely happens in a discipline: undisputed champion in two weight categories beating all the best, and also a certain difficulty on the part of the organizers in finding her an opponent. This time, however, he had to surrender the Gallo weight belt to an incredible Julianna Pena, who started out as very disadvantaged: in the first round she went to the mat and stoically resisted the finalization, in the second she accepts the boxing exchange with Nunes, shatters the certainties with a couple of combos to the face and then subdues her with a neck grip. Julianna Pena, 32, American from Spokane like John Stockton but Latin at heart (Mexican mother, Venezuelan father), is the classic example of how sport transforms you: she was an overweight and aggressive girl, in adolescence she was convinced to try a cardio-kick session with the intent of losing weight, he fell in love with contact disciplines and from there the transition to mma was short. In 2017 she seemed very well off, then she lost to Valentina Shevchenko and a few months later she stopped because she was pregnant. She returned two and a half years later, and slowly began to scale up the rankings. Yesterday he hardly celebrated in the first minute, he hardly believed in the accomplished feat. But there is an air of revenge.