UFC 307 was an enormous event for the women’s bantamweight division, with both a familiar face now sitting pretty atop the top of the 135lb tree and a fresh-faced wrecking ball securing a crucial win over the #2 ranked contender.
Yet despite Kayla Harrison getting her hand raised in the main card opener, she would leave the arena a frustrated figure; having failed to earn the finish over veteran Ketlen Viera and being almost completely ignored by the newly crowned bantamweight queen.
Chael Sonnen breaks down Julianna Pena’s ‘troll job’ over Kayla Harrison
Following her controversial split decision victory over Raquel Pennington to re-claim the bantamweight title, Julianna Pena would refuse to acknowledge Kayla Harrison as the next contender – instead taking aim at the consensus greatest female fighter of all time.
“What I’d really like is for Amanda Nunes to quit ducking me inside this octagon and let’s settle it – we’re one and one, that would be the greatest fight in mixed martial arts history in the bantamweight division.”
As the boos echoed around the Delta Center arena and the UFC production crew put up a split screen showing a live feed of Harrison backstage, Pena would double down on her desire to walk into The Lioness’ den for a third time.
“I do not believe that she’s done being retired, I want to see her back in the octagon so that we can settle the score once and for all.”
Whilst many within the MMA community believe that Pena’s post-fight callout was proof that she simply doesn’t wish to ever face Harrison in the octagon, UFC legend Chael Sonnen believes that this was all an intentional act… And one that the fanbase fell for, hook, line, and sinker.
“That’s a troll job, Amanda isn’t even in the organization and if she comes back, she’d like to start at 145lbs – I mean not for nothing, but that division’s gone, and we got a lot of room between those two fighting.
“It’s obviously Kayla [next], and Pena knows that it’s Kayla which is why it’s great,” argued the popular Bad Guy, noting that ‘The Venezuelan Vixen’ isn’t even the first UFC champion to employ such a divisive strategy this year.
“Sean O’Malley pulled that one over Merab [Dvalishvili]. Merab was in the front row and O’Malley calls out like Ilia Topuria and Merab even goes in the back because the deal’s not done till it’s done – he’s like ‘You got to say my name, say my name.’”
Nunes announced her retirement from the sport back in June 2023 after successfully defending her 135lb title against Irena Aldana; which arrived 11 months after dominating Pena in their heated rematch.
“That was a troll job, and it was very well done,” concluded Sonnen on the matter, before also injecting Rocky’s name back into the mix as a potential future title challenger.
“I believe that Kayla will get the nod but Pennington’s back in the [title] conversation. There are a lot of people, I am one of them, that believe that Pennington won this fight.
“I picked Pena, I have a personal relationship with Pena, I was rooting for Pena – but she did not win this fight, at least from what I saw.”
Despite her hand being raised, Sonnen argues UFC 307 was ‘not a win’ for Harrison
Whilst Chael Sonnen doesn’t believe that Pena won the co-main event title fight, he also doesn’t believe that UFC 307 was the breakout success story that Kayla Harrison was hoping for either.
In a video shared to his YouTube channel, aptly previewed in the thumbnail ‘Kayla Harrison Looked Beatable’, the UFC legend argued her perceived aura of invincibility is now gone; having been unable to find the desired finish and suffering a significant amount of damage in the process.
“Kayla needs to make sure when she goes back and assesses this fight, she does not come like everyone else does which is ‘I got the outcome that I wanted and so everything else is right’ – everything is not right.
“There were some very bad moments in there, if you are a two-time Olympic Judo champion and you got to your positions multiple times and failed at Judo against a person who’s never done Judo then not everything is right.
Sonnen claimed “This was not a win tonight,” as he explained that where Ketlen Viera found one or two minutes of success, future opponents might find three or four, then a round, and then two rounds etc, all the way until there’s nothing left that’s unknown.
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“Once you have a body of work for a fighter that you can sit on, you get an athlete who comes in and says, ‘I can beat them’ – and not beat them by doing just this [one thing].
“I now have four or five ideas that I have seen other people do to either win positions or slow positions, and that is what happened with Kayla tonight… She looked human.”
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