Julianna Peña 'plagued' by injuries for Kayla Harrison fight, went in with a 'severe handicap'
Julianna Peña has fallen from the UFC women's bantamweight throne for a second time.
UFC 316 was a rough night at the office for Peña, who suffered a second-round kimura loss to Kayla Harrison. The bout was Peña's second scheduled title defense of her UFC career, kicking off her second title reign after she previously held the belt from December 2021 to July 2022.
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Speaking publicly for the first time since her loss, Peña revealed on Tuesday's edition of "The Ariel Helwani Show" that she was far from her best self heading into the highly anticipated clash.
"I've been doing this since 2008. I think I have dislocated, broken and torn every ligament in my body," Peña said. "I was plagued with several injuries leading up to that fight, and it was not a good camp for me in that sense because I knew I was going into the fight with a pretty severe handicap.
"It crossed my mind [not to fight] but it wasn't bad enough to the point where I would have to not fight because I knew I was going to be able to push through, but I think it's a funny thing that my coaches probably didn't explain the severity of the situation to me. Otherwise, I probably would have thought more heavily on not competing."
According to Peña, her injuries occurred late in her fight camp, starting in the second week of May when she broke her thumb "on a training partner." The thumb was so swollen that it made gripping difficult, she said, which she is still struggling with after the fight. After that, Peña claimed that toward the end of the month, she took a hard fall in the cage that resulted in a tear in her elbow and broke off several bone chips. The injury prevented her from fully extending her arm, she said, but she did her best to work on the hindrances before she left for fight week.
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Peña, 35, said she's undergoing surgery on her elbow in July, along with another surgery she didn't reveal.
But regardless of all the damage sustained, there aren't any regrets in toughing it out to face Harrison.
"I don't regret competing," Peña said. "I put in too much time. I've taken away too much time from other people. From my daughter, from my coaches, from their families. So I don't regret competing, no. I just wish that I could have competed under better circumstances.
"It doesn't matter because you're going to get locked inside that Octagon anyway. Knowing that I was going into the fight with that big of a handicap definitely sucked, but then lo and behold, that's actually the same arm that she isolated and was able to kimura, so I had no strength to be able to fight that — then hot-dog it, [the fight-ending submission happened] with five seconds left in the round. It's humiliating, it's embarrassing and it sucks. Oh well. Live to fight another day."
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With the injuries piling up and the accomplishments already attached to her name, it begs the question of how much longer Peña wants to fight. After the loss, she indicated she hopes to jump immediately back into a title fight and challenge the winner of an expected Harrison vs. Amanda Nunes superfight.
Peña expects her recovery timetable from the upcoming surgeries to be relatively short — around six months. After that, she'll see where she's at mentally.
"I don't want to do anything else," Pena said. "Fighting has been so much a part of my life that it's been a week and a half and I'm sitting here like, 'What am I supposed to do now with the rest of my time?' Obviously I'm going to Disney World, I'm going on a vacation. So that's definitely one thing, but after that, I have a lot of things to consider, and they will all come after my surgery and my healing stage.
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"I've proven that you can tear four out of five ligaments in your knee and still win and compete at the highest level. I've proven that I can tear my other knee and still come back and compete at the highest level. I've proven that I can dislocate my elbows and still come back at the highest level. So I've broken it all, I've torn it all. There's really not anything I think I couldn't come back from. This is just a part of the game. This is from years of wear and tear on my body, and I'll be able to come back and feel better — which is an exciting thing, because if I'm fighting with two arms, you girls better watch out."
As soon as Peña vs. Harrison concluded, the table was set for Nunes' return.
If Peña does get her wish once the dust is settled again at 135 pounds, she'd ideally prefer a trilogy fight against Nunes. Regarding who she thinks wins the matchup, she thinks her former rival still has enough in the tank to get it done.
"Amanda and I were 1-1, and I still feel like there's some unfinished business there," Peña said. "Kayla, I would love to compete against [her] again with a camp where I'm not going in there like a bag of bones, trying to put them together with duct tape. So that would be best-case scenario, but I'll definitely be there cageside, watching them do their thing when they get ready to go, for sure. I'm curious.
"I think that [Nunes] probably more than likely will [win], but I really don't care. I'm just there to eat my popcorn and watch the show."
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