The greatest ever doesn't know how to stay away

Let's be completely honest for a second. When Amanda Nunes dropped her gloves and her two belts on the canvas at UFC 289, did anyone actually believe she was gone for good?

Combat sports retirements are the biggest joke in athletics. They are basically just extended vacations. Look at Conor McGregor. Look at Jon Jones. Look at Georges St-Pierre teasing us for a decade.

The only guy who actually stayed retired was Khabib Nurmagomedov. And even he probably wrestles bears on the weekend just to feel something.

Nunes stepping away in 2023 felt slightly different at the time. She had her wife, her kid, and absolutely nothing left to prove to anyone with a functioning brain.

But the news broke that Nunes recently addressed her future in the UFC after her next fight. The fact that we are even having this conversation proves how weird the fight game is right now.

The Lioness is bored. Or maybe she just looked around at the absolute state of the divisions she left behind and realized she could still sleepwalk through most of the top ten.

You don't just walk away when you are the undisputed GOAT of women's MMA. The itch always comes back. But the real story isn't that Nunes wants to fight again. The real story is how badly the UFC needs her to.

The wreckage she left behind

Think about what happened to the bantamweight division the minute Nunes walked out the door. It was an absolute disaster class in promotion by Dana White and the matchmakers.

The UFC spent years relying on Nunes to hold up two entire weight classes. She defended those belts against anyone they put in front of her. But they completely forgot to build anybody else to take her place.

When she retired, the 135-pound division turned into a wasteland. We got Raquel Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva fighting for a vacant title in front of a dead crowd in Toronto.

No disrespect to Pennington. She grinds. But she is not moving the needle. You aren't selling pay-per-views based on a Pennington main event.

And let's not even talk about the 145-pound featherweight division. The UFC literally had to take it behind the barn and shoot it because Nunes was the only reason it existed in the first place.

She beat Cris Cyborg so badly back in 2018 that the UFC just gave up on finding other featherweight women. Nunes owned that division by default.

The ghost of Julianna Peña

Let's rewind to December 2021 and UFC 269. Julianna Peña did the unthinkable.

She dragged Amanda Nunes into a sloppy, exhausting dogfight and somehow choked her out. It was the biggest upset since Matt Serra clipped Georges St-Pierre.

But what happened next was the most Amanda Nunes thing ever. She didn't make excuses. She didn't whine to the press.

She fired her long-time coaches, started her own gym, and came back six months later to exact the most methodical revenge imaginable.

The rematch at UFC 277 wasn't a fight. It was an extended assault.

Nunes dropped Peña three times in one round. She left her looking like she had been in a car crash. It was 50 minutes of total dominance across two fights, if we are being honest about the skill gap.

So the idea that Peña is still loudly demanding a trilogy fight is laughable. Peña has basically become the most annoying person at the party who won't stop talking about that one time she scored a touchdown in high school.

If Nunes is coming back to fight Peña, we should all riot. We have seen that movie. The sequel was a bloodbath. We don't need a third act.

The reality of an MMA comeback

The solo gym gamble

When Nunes left American Top Team after the first Peña loss, people thought she was absolutely crazy.

You don't just leave one of the best camps in the world to start your own private gym with your friends. That is usually the first sign a fighter is falling off a cliff.

But Nunes proved everyone wrong. She brought her own hand-picked training partners, completely reinvented her cardio, and dominated the rest of her run.

The problem now is that private gyms can easily become echo chambers. When you are the boss, nobody tells you that you look slow in sparring.

Nobody tells you to hang up the gloves. They are all getting paid by you. They are on your payroll.

If she is seriously talking about sticking around after this upcoming return, she needs people who will tell her the brutal truth. If she loses a step, the bantamweight division is just waiting to feast on the carcass.

The Kayla Harrison problem

We all know the real fight to make. It is the only fight that actually makes sense for a Nunes return.

Kayla Harrison finally made the jump to the UFC. She is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in judo. She is built like a tank.

For years, she was the big fish in the very small PFL pond. When she came over, people wondered if she could even make 135 pounds safely.

Not only did she make the weight, she looked terrifying doing it. She completely mauled Holly Holm at UFC 300.

The UFC has been desperately trying to build Harrison into the next unstoppable force. They want her to be the new Ronda Rousey. But there is a massive shadow hanging over her.

Nunes and Harrison used to train together at American Top Team. There is history there. There is tension.

A fight against Harrison is the only thing that moves the needle right now. It is the only challenge left that actually looks dangerous on paper for the Lioness.

Harrison is a massive grappler. She is younger, hungrier, and she actually wants the smoke.

The UFC's promotional failure

Here is where I have to call out Dana White and the UFC brass.

They are getting extremely lucky that Nunes wants to come back. They completely botched the post-Nunes transition.

Instead of using her final years to build up the next generation, they just threw random contenders at her and hoped for the best. When Irene Aldana fought Nunes at UFC 289, it was embarrassing.

Aldana literally froze. She just stood there for five rounds while Nunes used her for target practice. The UFC sold us a killer from Mexico and gave us a human heavy bag.

You cannot run a multi-billion dollar sports organization and rely entirely on a 35-year-old double champion to carry half your roster.

If Nunes comes back and wins, then what? We are right back where we started. She holds the belt hostage, fights once a year, and the rest of the division sits around waiting for scraps.

Addressing her future

The fact that Nunes is already talking about what happens after this next fight is concerning.

It means she isn't fully committed. You can't fight in a cage with one foot out the door. That is how you get knocked out.

If she is treating this next bout as a tune-up or a one-off, she might be in for a rude awakening. The game moves fast. A year off in MMA is like five years in any other sport.

Just look at what happened to Henry Cejudo. He retired, talked trash for three years, came back, and looked like an old man against Aljamain Sterling and Merab Dvalishvili.

Cejudo thought he could just step right back into the deep end. He drowned.

Nunes is historically great, but she is still human. Her body has been through wars. She has nothing left to prove, yet here she is, teasing another run.

The final verdict

I will definitely watch. We all will. Nunes is pure box office violence.

But let's drop the illusion that this is some grand, triumphant return. It is a legendary fighter who got bored and a promotion that is desperate for a star.

If she fights Harrison, it will be the biggest WMMA fight in a decade. If she fights anyone else, it is just a victory lap to cash another massive check.

Either way, the UFC needs to wake up. You can't rely on the ghosts of your past forever. Eventually, you have to build something new.

But until then, we get to see the Lioness roar one more time. Hopefully, it doesn't end with her staring at the lights.