Dana White Bans Amanda Nunes From Main Events, Team Nunes Fires Back

Well, some back-and-forth is now going on between Dana White and Amanda Nunes’ coach…

Just two days ago UFC 213 went down in Las Vegas, Nevada. Everything was going well until the morning of the event, when Amanda Nunes pulled out on short notice. Citing illness, Nunes backed out of her main event rematch with Valentina Shevchenko.

The aftermath was predictably negative, and the purveyor of that sentiment was none other than Dana White. The UFC president blasted the women’s bantamweight champion, claiming she’d passed the pre-fight medicals.

Nunes’s statement claimed the doctors found a heavy blockage in her sinus’ and issued her antibiotics.

White Banishes Nunes From Main Event Slots

White explained that he isn’t quite as mad about the Nunes situation as he is about Demetrious Johnson. Still, he hits Nunes with a main event slot ban in the same breath:

“It was 90% mental and probably 10% physical,” White said. “A lot of fighters have had times they didn’t feel right and we’ve had guys who are outright sick. I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation like (this) where she was physically capable of fighting. I won’t do that again. I won’t main event (her) again.”

There’s no pattern of her refusing to fight somebody. Those are the type of situations where I’ll read something where a guy says something ‘I refused to fight this guy’,” White said.

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“I’ll tell you it just happened with [Demetrious Johnson]. We have a fight for this guy, it’s for his chance to break the record. [T.J. Dillashaw] is a very credible guy that wants to fight and the guy’s cutting weight and getting ready and he’s absolutely refusing to fight him.

“So that’s when I sit there and you’re the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world, No. 1, No. 2, you’re on ‘X’ amount of defenses and you’re absolutely refusing to fight somebody. When there’s a pattern of that, I start looking at stripping a guy.”

Nunes’ coach has fired back, you can read his response below…

Team Nunes Fires Back

Speaking with MMAFighting.com, Nunes’ coach Conan Silveira had a message for Dana White and everyone else ‘talking negative:’

“She was already feeling it before the weigh-ins,” Nunes’ coach Conan Silveira told MMA Fighting. “Las Vegas is too hot, so I think that contributed to her chronic sinusitis, and the weight cut doesn’t help since you dehydrate. I don’t want to blame the weight cut, but it definitely doesn’t help.

“That has happened before, but we managed to come back, but it wasn’t as hard as this time. People don’t understand that that’s a big responsibility. You invest a lot to get to this position. You have to be 100 percent.”

“If you have a mouth you can say whatever you want,” Silveira said of White’s comments. “Every person has their own opinion. What he said is what a promoter says. It was enough for him to hear the doctor clearing her, but at the end of the day, Amanda is the one who steps in there to fight. Opinions from everyone else are nothing but opinions. You have to respect her decision. She’s the champion. What everyone else says means nothing.”

“If any other fighter is ill, nobody says anything. Everyone has this right. But she doesn’t because the champion? She has no right to get ill?” Silveira responds. “He’s the promoter and has his opinion. That’s what he got from the doctor. Amanda went back to the hospital the next morning (Saturday) and did other tests and they saw she had chronic sinusitis and gave her antibiotics.”