Julianna Peña and Raquel Pennington never met in the octagon, but they spent plenty of time under the same roof.
Ten years after their time on The Ultimate Fighter 18, Peña said her TUF castmate is now her first priority — and she has a score to settle.
“I’ve never forgot about how horribly she talked about me in the house, and then accused me of being a brat, because I wouldn’t go hang out with them at nighttime while they were sitting around a campfire talking crap about me,” Peña said on The MMA Hour. “Like, you’re not my friend. And I found that out very quickly when we were living together for seven weeks.”
Peña wound up winning the show, while Pennington was eliminated by Jessica Rakoczy in the seminals. During filming, the two roomed together and were on the same team led by Miesha Tate. But they didn’t exactly hit it off.
“She’s sleeping up above me,” Peña said. “Before she was eliminated from the competition, she was staying up all night until, like, three in the morning, drinking and having a good time with everybody else that was eliminated from the competition. So she wouldn’t come to bed till, like, the wee hours. And then when Monday would roll around, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, every single day, we’re training two times a day, she wouldn’t come to practice. She was sleeping in, because she had stayed up the night before.
“So in the morning time, because we’re the first team to go into the gym that day — we had first practices — I’m waking up to get my medicine, I’m waking up to get my bags together, I’m waking up to start my day, but she’s mad about me doing that. So then she started to say that I’m like being all loud on purpose.
“We’re living on top of each other. We literally got the smallest room with three chicks in one room. We’re living on top of each other, and it’s not my fault that you stayed up all night and that you’re dragging ass in the morning and not even coming to practice. And again, this was before she was eliminated from the competition.”
Peña learned the extent of Pennington’s dislike for her during an interview segment for the UFC’s website. Asked to prompt each other with questions, she inquired who Pennington would most like to beat up in the house. The answer was her.
“And I said, why me? Raquel, I put you in my high heels,” Peña said. “I did your makeup so beautiful. I gave you my dresses and taught you how to walk like a lady, and now you’re going to kick me out of the house? For what? This is such BS. And she said it was because I was too loud, and I said, ‘I’m just going to practice, dude, like I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
“So anyways, she wasn’t able to get past Jessica Rakoczy … and that was somebody that I dominated and that I finished. And so, like I said, we’ve had this brewing for a long time now, and it’s a fight that’s been needing to happen for a very long time, since 2013. I haven’t forgot about it.”
Peña said the UFC has told her she will get the next title shot, and Pennington is her first choice of opponent. Right now, the bantamweight belt is vacant after the retirement of former two-division champion Amanda Nunes, whose trilogy with Peña was swapped for a fight with Irene Aldana at UFC 289.
Pennington unsuccessfully challenged Nunes for the title at UFC 224, losing via fifth-round TKO. Since then, she’s amassed a 6-2 record, winning her past five fights. Peña, who famously submitted Nunes at UFC 269 only to lose the belt in an immediate rematch, said her TUF rival’s record makes her a better candidate than Mayra Bueno Silva, who called her out after a submission win over ex-champ Holly Holm.
Silva dissed Peña by saying a fight with Pennington would draw flies at the box office. Peña disagrees.
“I think that, yeah, it is [a bigger fight], because she is on a five-fight winning streak and she’s been crying about getting a title shot since the last time that she quit on the stool,” Peña said. “So it’s about time for her to get another ass whooping, I would assume.”