Amanda Nunes Invited To Claressa Shields’ Next Fight

UFC women’s bantamweight and featherweight champion Amanda Nunes has been invited to Claressa Shields’ next fight.

Talk has been heating up of a potential fight between Nunes and unified middleweight boxing champion Shields. The latter even showed up recently at Nunes’ title defense against Germaine de Randamie at UFC 245 earlier this month.

However, Nunes shut down talk of crossover fight afterwards unless Shields was willing to meet her inside the Octagon.

Regardless, Shields’ promoter Dmitriy Salita has invited Nunes to attend the American’s light middleweight title fight against Ivana Habazin on January 10.

“It was great for Claressa to go see Amanda fight live and that created a lot of interest,” Salita told MMA Junkie. “We’d like to invite Amanda to Claressa’s next fight, which is going to be on Jan. 10. Hopefully she can show up and see Claressa first hand.

“It’s a work in progress – the media is interested, the fans are interested and, from the feedback we’ve received from multiple media sources, you can see how many people will write about it.”

Despite Nunes seeming unreceptive to a fight unless it’s in mixed martial arts, Salita is positive a crossover fight in some form could come to fruition before the end of 2020 — especially after observing the increasing interest from fans in wanting it to happen:

“In the ideal world, Claressa will fight Amanda sometime before the end of the year,” he added. “So I think sometime next fall, late time in fall would be the perfect time. By that time, I believe that both of these champions, the name is going to progress and grow bigger and the popularity is going to be there.

“If it happens, I believe it will be the biggest women’s match, boxing or UFC, of all time, and something in the likes of Mayweather-McGregor. If it can happen, it would really be tremendous, not only for the sports world, but also culturally and socially. I think it’ll have a tremendous, positive effect on the growth of women’s sports not only in the United States but throughout the whole world.”

Do you think Nunes vs. Shields will happen?