Julianna Peña was removed from dazzled by what she noticed from UFC 297’s co-main occasion.
“It was a sleep fest. I used to be not impressed. Not impressed with their efficiency, as my pal Georges St-Pierre likes to say,” Peña mentioned Monday on The MMA Hour.
“No one received. The followers misplaced. Actually, there was no winner.”
A former UFC girls’s bantamweight champion, Peña watched from residence as her division topped a brand new champion at UFC 297 following the retirement of Amanda Nunes. Peña was anticipated to be a part of the vacant title bout, nonetheless damage prevented her from competing, so as a substitute Raquel Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva confronted off this previous Saturday in Toronto, with Pennington in the end successful a unanimous determination to finish her 11-year journey to the belt and develop into the oldest feminine champion in UFC historical past at age 35.
The struggle didn’t precisely blow away the followers inside Toronto’s Scotiabank Enviornment, nonetheless, and 10 of Pennington’s final 11 UFC wins have are available in choices. Peña was not shocked.
“So we’re on The Final Fighter home, [Pennington] has to struggle the semifinal struggle in opposition to Jessica Rakoczy, a really adorned eight-time world champion boxer,” Peña mentioned. “She will be able to’t get previous Jessica Rakoczy and Dana White tells her, ‘Throw your fingers, throw your fingers,’ and she or he’s like, ‘Nah, I’m not going throw my fingers.’ After which when she loses the struggle to Rakoczy, she says, ‘Effectively, Dana was attempting to inform me to throw my fingers and I didn’t take heed to him.’ After which what did you hear? Ten years later, she’s saying, ‘Effectively, Dana wished me to throw my fingers extra and he wished me to press up and throw my fingers.’ Some issues by no means change, some issues by no means change. I imply, golly, you suppose you’d get a clue.
“I don’t perceive. I’ve by no means seen something prefer it. I actually haven’t. It’s like some bizarre factor the place she simply, like, doesn’t wish to really struggle. She simply needs to be glued to you. I don’t know if you happen to noticed that struggle with Holly Holm the place it was simply up in opposition to the fence all the time, within the clinch all the time. I imply, it’s a great way to remain protected. … However you’d suppose that she would hear and form of get a clue from the boss, and say he needs you to throw your fingers, so simply do it. Do what he’s telling you to do. She doesn’t take heed to her nook, so it’s virtually like, you’ll be able to lead a horse to water however you’ll be able to’t make it drink.
“She simply doesn’t get that fireside lit beneath her butt,” Peña continued. “She doesn’t have that eye of the tiger, that shark that smells blood within the water. She’s not a killer. She’s doesn’t have that killer intuition. However I do know any individual that does — and her title is Juliana ‘The Venezuelan Vixen,’ the Peña energy.”
Peña’s relationship with Pennington stretches again to the pair’s time on The Final Fighter 18 in 2013, a season which noticed Peña in the end emerge as event champion. The 2 didn’t get alongside on the present and that animosity has solely endured within the 11 years since.
Peña mentioned on Monday that she is lastly wholesome and again to coaching. She promised that she has already spoken with UFC officers about her return and is eyeing a date in both June or July to settle her enterprise with Pennington for the belt. As the one lady to defeat Nunes since 2014, Peña stays one of the adorned fighters within the UFC’s present girls’s bantamweight division, and she or he vowed to kick Pennington into retirement as soon as they meet.
After that, she’s prepared to hold girls’s bantamweight into its new period in earnest.
“Whether or not it was Mayra, whether or not it was Raquel, it don’t matter. The one one which makes me bleed my very own blood is me, OK? So it doesn’t matter who I struggle,” Peña mentioned. “Nevertheless, I do know as a businesswoman that Mayra would’ve been the larger struggle as a result of she likes to verbally spar again and she or he’s extra fascinating in that sense, and Raquel doesn’t say something. And that’s why I confer with her as only a boring block of wooden, as a result of it’s simply there. what I imply? It’s just like the turtle on prime of the pole. It’s like, how did the turtle climb the pole? Effectively, it simply obtained there however you don’t know the way it obtained there. Any individual put it there.
“It’s not that it obtained there by itself. It’s that there was nobody else. There was actually nobody else. The turtle’s on prime of the pole as a result of any individual positioned you there. And that’s form of how it’s with Raquel. You’re simply there as a result of there was nobody else. Not since you’re simply this actually thrilling person who the followers are simply dying to see you struggle. That’s not the case. So it might’ve clearly been higher with Mayra. However simply wait — wait your flip, wait your flip in line, you’ll get the chance. Simply wait a little bit extra. She’s proper now just a bit pet canine, however she’ll get higher. And when she does, I’ll be prepared for her.”
