As a guest on The MMA Hour this week, Julianna Pena had a lot of say. The women’s bantamweight contender spoke about everyone from Holly Holm to Amanda Nunes, and basically she’s not impressed with any of them. The TUF winner is frustrated that she hasn’t got a shot at the title yet, and decided to vent her frustrations on the show.
First, she gave her reasoning for not understanding the lack of a title shot (transcribed by MMA Fighting):
“It is annoying. It’s annoying and it’s embarrassing. I feel like I shouldn’t have to do this song and dance and shout off of the rooftops like a wild, screaming banshee being like, ‘gimme my title shot!’ Holly [Holm] beat the oldest lady in the division, Marion Reneau. She beat like two old ladies, then she fought to a draw, which was like a coin flip as to who won the fight, [Raquel] Pennington or Holly, and she gets a title shot out of thin air. Bethe Correia beat Shayna Baszler, who didn’t get past me on The Ultimate Fighter and she gets a title shot just by waving her hands, you know.
“Miesha [Tate] got her second title shot after being 1-0, against Ronda [Rousey], after she beat Jessica Eye she got another title shot to campaign against Holly. I beat Jessica Eye, nothing happens. I beat Shayna Baszler, nothing happens, and Shayna Baszler was in the top 10 back then. I keep beating these people that other people have beat and they get title shots, and I don’t get title shots, it is annoying. But I know that in anything in life you’ve got to work hard and you’ve got to work for stuff. If I want this I just have to keep working, and that’s what I plan on doing.”
Current champion Amanda Nunes said she was “unimpressed” with Pena’s latest win, over Cat Zingano at UFC 200. When quizzed about that, she zipped back that she wasn’t impressed with Nunes’ fight against Zingano either. Of course, Zingano beat Nunes.
Then she went off on Holly Holm, claiming she is overrated:
“I’ve been saying for a while now that ‘Harmless Holly’ couldn’t hurt a fly,” she said. “And especially in a five-round fight.
“I think she kind of got thrown into the mix and got into the top ten beating up some people that have not been around as long. So I think she got really lucky with the choices of opponents she’s had.”
There is one person that’s probably in front of her in line for a title shot though – Ronda Rousey. And while Pena doesn’t particularly like the idea of being passed over for a shot in favor of Rousey if it’s comes to that, she at least understands why it would go down that way:
“No, I don’t think it’s fair, absolutely not,” she said. “But, I know that Ronda is a big part of the reason why we have a division in the first place. So you’ve got to pay respect where respect is due, and I definitely respect her for the fact that she was blazing trails in order to get us into the UFC in the first place. She’s a big name, she’s the money fight, and they definitely want to see her with her belt back. If she decides to come back, I’m sure that they’re going to give it to her.”
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