According to Pennington’s fiance, they’re both happy with her corner’s push to keep her fighting into the 5th round.
Raquel Pennington’s corner is taking a lot of flack from all sides after encouraging her to keep fighting Amanda Nunes at UFC 224 after she told them she was done leading into the 5th round. But as far as Pennington and her fiance Tecia Torres are concerned, they made the right call in telling her to push through what looked like a badly broken nose rather than quit.
”Both us and our coaches agree with the decision made to go into the 5th round,” Torres wrote on Instagram. “We know Raquel more than anyone else and know if we let her give up on herself going into the last round she would have always regretted it. She fought with heart and grit until the end.”
That end came two and a half minutes into the fifth round with Pennington turtled on the canvas with blood pooling on the canvas from her nose. The women’s bantamweight contender was taken to the hospital after the fight, and fans on the internet were left to debate whether her corner had helped her push through a moment of doubt or sent her to the slaughter for unnecessary damage. Regardless of our opinion, it seems like the fighter involved is okay with how things turned out.