Julianna Pena trashed the UFC 297 co-main event before discussing when she plans to fight for the women’s bantamweight title.
On Saturday night, fans were left disappointed by the vacant women’s bantamweight title fight between Raquel Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva. Pennington capitalized on the life-changing opportunity and emerged victorious by unanimous decision after pushing Bueno Silva beyond her cardio limits.
Although nothing has been confirmed, former women’s bantamweight queen Julianna Pena is expected to be the first fighter to challenge Pennington for her throne. As a result, Pena kept a close eye on the UFC 297 co-main event to see who her next opponent could be.
During an interview on The MMA Hour, Pena provided her reaction to Pennington vs. Bueno Silva by saying:
“I think I saw a photo of Sheetara (Bueno Silva), and she’s literally laying on her back with both of her hands up like this. Are you tanning or are you fighting? This isn’t Miami. What are you doing? It was a snoozefest. I was not impressed. Not impressed with their performance as my friend Georges St-Pierre likes to say.”
Pena continued:
“I definitely thought that it was going to be a little bit better. I think that it was unfortunate that both girls had each other dead to rights and they still couldn’t finish one another, so that was pretty annoying. Otherwise, I would say that, no, I warned you guys and had Frank play the breaking news that it was going to be a complete snoozefest with the one cheater and a block of wood and that’s what everybody got. Mystic Pena strikes again.”
Watch Pena’s entire interview on The MMA Hour below:
Julianna Pena talks about when and where she could fight Raquel Pennington for the UFC women’s bantamweight title
Due to several injuries, Julianna Pena hasn’t fought since losing against Amanda Nunes in July 2022. Luckily, ‘The Venezuelan Vixen’ has made a full recovery and returned to training. During the previously mentioned interview, Pena had this to say about when she plans to fight Raquel Pennington:
“Maybe the first week of June, maybe the third week of July. I’m not sure exactly. I would say one of those two dates, first week of June or third week in July. I asked for International Fight Week, they said no. They said that date wasn’t available. They did say however if anything changes that they would let me know about International Fight Week.”
Pena followed up by talking about a potential location for her proposed title fight against Pennington:
“Location I think would be a really big key factor for me. They won’t give me the location of June 1 yet and July I’m not sure either. I do know, lucky me, that both locations will be in the United States.”
In December 2021, Julianna Pena shocked the world by dethroning Amanda Nunes with a second-round submission. Since then, Pena hasn’t been able to capitalize on the added attention from the legendary win. Therefore, it’ll be intriguing to see if she can return and regain UFC gold in 2024.
