Dana White clears up women’s bantamweight title contendership picture

UFC President Dana White has shed some light on who is likely next for women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes.

Nunes has looked more or less unbeatable since capturing the bantamweight strap, authoring impressive title defenses against Ronda Rousey, Valentina Shevchenko, Raquel Pennington, Holly Holm, and Germaine de Randamie—and that doesn’t include her work up in the featherweight division, where she’s also the champion.

Given that Nunes has already bested most of the top contenders in her division, it’s getting harder and harder to find viable challengers for her throne. White, however, believes Mexico’s Irene Aldana is probably just a win away from a title shot.

Aldana is riding high after a devastating knockout victory over the formerly unbeaten Ketlen Vieira. She’s now scheduled to take on the division’s former champion in Holly Holm, and if she wins, White expects her to earn a title shot against Nunes.

“I would imagine if Aldana won, yeah. [A title shot] would make sense,” White said after this week’s episode of Contender Series (h/t MMA News).

Amanda Nunes is currently scheduled to defend her UFC featherweight title against Megan Anderson at UFC 256 on December 12. Over the last few months, the two-division champ has admitted she’s considering retirement, but White is hoping to convince her otherwise by building up the featherweight division.

“I literally just told Sean [Shelby] and Mick [Maynard] in the last meeting, let’s get this [featherweight] division built for her,” White said on The Schmozone podcast in June. “Let’s build this division for her and let’s start figuring this out. Now she’s talking about retiring?

“You know what’s awesome about that when you think about it,” White added. “Her retiring isn’t awesome, that actually drives me nuts. You know how I always say if you’re talking about retirement, you probably should … unless you’re where she’s at. It’s like what I said about [Daniel] Cormier when he was talking about retiring a couple of years ago.”

Who do you want to see Dana White and the UFC serve up for Amanda Nunes next?