UFC women’s bantamweight champion Julianna Pena has overcome plenty of adversity in her career, some of which shocked even Dana White.
Pena is currently in the midst of her second title reign and is fast approaching the first defense of it.
On Saturday, June 7, Pena and Kayla Harrison will co-headline UFC 316, bringing a feud to the Octagon that has been simmering ever since the challenger’s PFL days.
While ‘The Venezuelan Vixen’ is being widely counted out, she’s no stranger to finding success as an underdog in the UFC.
And odds aren’t the only thing that Pena has overcome in MMA.
The 35-year-old has repeatedly battled injuries, none more serious than the ones she suffered from a controversial gym incident that left White enraged.
Julianna Pena suffered serious knee injury at gym that Dana White branded ‘disgusting’
Pena won The Ultimate Fighter 18 and entered 2014 looking to build on that momentum. But her plans to make a statement against Jessica Andrade at UFC 171 fell through in devastating fashion.
White announced that Pena had suffered a horrendous injury at the hands of a training partner at the Skijitsu gym in Spokane.
During a media scrum for UFC 169, White described the concerning details he’d been told of a grappling exchange with an allegedly aggressive training partner, whose move left Pena with a torn MCL, ACL, LCL, meniscus and hamstring.
“It’s the worst injury I’ve ever heard of, ever, in this sport, and you hear about those types of injuries in football,” White said. “Apparently, when she came into the gym – and again, she was hysterical when I talked to her, crying – she was training in her gym and one of her training partners, a guy, was saying to her, ‘Oh, you’re wearing your Ultimate Fighter shirt, we’re real scared.’
“He says that and was talking smack to her and then basically attacked her. He jumped on her back, started cranking her neck, and the way she fell her knee blew out. The most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard in my life. A year-and-a-half to two years she’ll be out, and I told her to leave that disgusting gym and go somewhere else with new coaches, new training partners, whatever. And that’s all I know.
“It sounds like assault to me, but how do you consider it assault in a gym? You know what I mean?”
Pena was ultimately out of action for the entirety of 2014 after undergoing surgery, returning in April 2015 with a bonus-worthy victory over Milana Dudieva.
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Julianna Pena’s coach refuted Dana White’s claims
White’s account of the incident was refuted by the gym’s head coach, Rick Little.
Speaking to MMA Weekly soon after news of Pena’s injury came out, Little insisted that the incident was simply an accident and by no means a deliberate act of “bullying.”
“They’re friends. They’re family friends. They’ve trained hundreds of times, and she corners him when he fights. There’s no bullying or nothing like that…it’s a normal training accident from a gym that’s produced plenty of fighters and not had people pull out during camps or anything like that.
“Julianna is the heart and soul of our team and absolutely nothing was more devastating than carrying her to my car last week,” Little continued. “The accident was plain and simple. It was a training accident that happened with her normal 145-pound training partner for years.
“There wasn’t any horseplay or assault. I guarantee the guy would be in the same condition as her if there was.”
The incident didn’t prevent Pena from continuing on at the gym, where she still trains having first arrived there as an amateur in 2008.
After Pena shocked the world by submitting Amanda Nunes with coach Little by her side, the pair will look to deliver a monumental upset once again at UFC 316.