What’s the story?
Controversial UFC women’s Bantamweight (BW) contender Julianna Pena fought just once in the year 2016. However, she succeeded to make some noise and promote herself in the division by trash talking every female bantamweight on the roster, especially ‘Rowdy’ Ronda Rousey.
Pena gained a tremendous amount of publicity last year by giving several hate-filled interviews about Ronda Rousey. Furthermore, she went on to attack the UFC, accusing the promotion of giving Rousey the royal treatment by granting her an immediate title shot.
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Pena also threatened to leave the UFC and also has promised to ‘raise hell’ if she is denied the title shot after her upcoming fight against top contender Valentina ‘Bullet’ Shevchenko. Now that we’ve entered 2017, things seem no different for Pena.
Here’s what she said in an interview on Brian Stann’s radio show Toe-2-Toe on SiriusXM Rush: (courtesy: MMAFighting)
“The thing that drives me crazy is that I took out her whole team. She should’ve wanted to fight me in vengeance for her team right after I beat every member in her team. I dismantled all of them. It drives me crazy that it wasn’t me that was able to do it and it drives me crazy that she’s been dodging me this whole time and that I wasn’t the one to be able to dethrone her. To show everyone that this girl’s been spoiled. “
In case you didn’t know...
Juliana Pena (8-2) has never been one to shy away from the spotlight. She has been a loud Rousey critic since the beginning of Rousey’s reign in the UFC. Ronda Rousey (12-2) on her part, has never directed much ire toward Pena. Despite that, Pena’s seemingly never-ending obsession with Rousey isn’t going away anytime soon.
Peña made her way to the UFC through The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) Season 18, the first season that featured female fighters and the season coached by then champion Rousey.
The heart of the matter
Pena continued to say that Rousey had been handed everything simply because of her name.
“She’s been handpicking her fights from day one. She’s been getting everything handed to her because her name is Ronda Rousey and she’s been brought up to be this glorious god that was untouchable and it just drives me crazy that I wasn’t able to be the one to dethrone her from the beginning.”
She then went on to heap praises on the only two fighters to beat Rousey:
“But hats off to Holly Holm and hats off to Amanda Nunes for getting the job done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to be me and I don’t know if it ever will be because I don’t know if she’s ever gonna come back or not.” (Julianna Pena heaps praises on the only two fighters to beat Rousey)
Pena simply seems to be keeping in trend with her aggressive behaviour towards virtually every woman in the 135-pound division. Now, although Pena’s has been baiting Rousey relentlessly, Rousey doesn’t seem to be biting.
If anything, Pena quite simply seems to be using her trash talking skills to promote her own brand whilst trashing the entire BW division.
What’s next?
Although Rousey’s MMA future seems to be uncertain at the least, Pena is all set to face top 135-pound contender Valentina ‘Bullet’ Shevchenko in the main event of UFC Fight Night Denver. Valentina is no slouch either. With wins over veteran fighters like Sarah Kauffman and former UFC champ Holly Holm, Valentina is on the brink of title contention.
This fight against Pena is being marketed as a number one contender fight, with the winner getting the opportunity to challenge reigning Champion Amanda Nunes.
Sportskeeda’s take:
Rousey’s future is anyone’s guess, however, we have a cracker of a fight on the Denver card when Julianna Pena takes on Valentina Shevchenko in the main event. Valentina comes from a highly respectable family of World Muay Thai champions.
Although she is a bit undersized for the 135-pound division, she makes up for that with her excellent skills and unquestionable work ethic.
Julianna Pena, on the other hand, is mainly a grappler who likes to make fights ugly. Her disrespectful behaviour towards Rousey and the rest of the Bantamweights seems to be bringing her a lot of attention, as of late.
As far as all this talk of Rousey ducking Pena is concerned, it is merely a marketing strategy on Pena’s part. Besides, Pena likes to pick a fight with anyone and everyone as evidenced by multiple accusations of physical violence levied on her by people in the past.
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