At long last, we have clarity.
Julianna Pena, ranked No. 10 in the UFC Women’s Bantamweight rankings, is out two years after tearing her ACL, MCL, LCL, meniscus and hamstring in one single incident. You can read more about that here.
After the injury, there was much speculation that her gym and training were at fault. Pena spoke to Jason Ellis on Sirius XM to clear things up.
Many thanks to Elias Cepeda of Yahoo! Sports for this copy of the transcript:
“I don’t think I accidentally explained it incorrectly to [Dana White] – I think I explained it 110 percent exactly how the story went,” Pena began.
“What happened was, I wasn’t even wearing an Ultimate Fighter shirt…the kid told me he thought it was an Ultimate Fighter rash guard. But, here’s the thing, it’s a gray rash guard, okay? It had a little UFC emblem on it. I was wearing that, I was late. So, when I got there, he was like ‘hurry up, let’s go.’ So, I get on the mat, I hit the clock, and he says, ‘Oh, you’re wearing your Ultimate Fighter rash guard. I was like, what’s that supposed to mean? ‘That you’re really tough, I’m really scared.’ I’m like, whatever, and we slapped hands, and a minute later, my knee was tore out.
“Normally, in the gym, when there’s tons of people we start on our knees, you know there’s not enough room. But, in this instance, it was just me and him on the mat. No one was there, and we slapped hands, and we started going, but right when we started going, it was like ‘Urghh!’ fighting for your life, just cock strong, you know, both of us, and I was like, ‘you’re not taking me down, bro.’ And he wasn’t, so, he was trying to take me down as much as he could. So, I had my shoulder blades up against the back wall, and he’s trying to rear-naked choke me from the side of my body. It’s not even close, and it pissed me off, and I’m like, be technical. Don’t try to cock strong, you know? I was turning into him, and he was trying to drag me to the ground and rear-naked choke me at the same time, just trying to use all of his weight to try to drop me to the ground. So, when I turned into it, it was just the amount of force – it just blew.”
[Sound Cloud/Sirius XM, h/t Yahoo! Sports]
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