Amanda Nunes-Julianna Pena 3 to Serve as UFC 289 Headliner in Vancouver

Hey Canada! 😃 pic.twitter.com/7ah0IFQAa4

— danawhite (@danawhite) April 7, 2023

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is officially going back to Canada this year.

On Friday, UFC President Dana White – who was caught on video slapping his wife on Dec. 31, 2022 – announced on social media that UFC 289 will be held at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. White then told Canadian outlet TSN that the main attraction for that show would be the rubber match between Amanda Nunes (22-5) and Julianna Pena (11-5) for the women’s bantamweight throne. Other matches recently booked for the card include Hakeem Dawodu (13-3-1) vs. Lucas Almeida (14-1) at featherweight, and Aiemann Zahabi (9-2) vs. Qileng Aori (24-9) in the bantamweight division.

The promotion had been rumored to instead be holding the card at Calgary, Alberta, Canada, but due to the playoff picture for the NHL team Calgary Flames, the Scotiabank Saddledome may not have been available for the promotion on June 10. Instead, the league took to the last Canadian venue that put up the UFC, in Vancouver, back in September 2019.

Nunes won the rematch against Pena in July 2022 to win back her belt, exacting revenge after suffering a shocking submission loss at the end of 2021 to “The Venezuelan Vixen.” The defeat for Nunes snapped a 12-fight win streak that saw her claim titles in two divisions, while beating nearly every woman that ever held the strap at both of those two weight categories. As the lone two-division champ in UFC women’s history, Nunes set or at one time held a number of records among the female divisions, including the most wins, championship victories, stoppages, first-round finishes and total title defenses.

Pena’s upset at UFC 269 in 2021 stacks up among the greatest in UFC history, but it was a feat she could not replicate when they met over seven months later. Instead, Nunes gave her opponent no chance to get anything going, with a pillar-to-post beating that earned a 50-43 card from one judge. Leading up her first encounter with Nunes, Pena was only on a one-fight win streak, having taped Sara McMann earlier in 2021 to earn the crack at gold. A great deal of inactivity has plagued the career of the Sikjitsu product, who will be entering into just her 11th UFC bout after nearly 10 years with the company.

UFC 289 will go down inside of the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. While the headliner is Nunes vs. Pena 3, the remainder of the main card has not yet been set. Expected matchups for the pay-per-view portion of the billing include a welterweight tilt pitting Stephen Thompson against Michel Pereira and a featherweight scrap between Dan Ige and Nate Landwehr. It is unclear if another championship bout will join the lineup.