If you paid attention to anything UFC related from December 2021 through July 2022, you likely saw Julianna Peña sitting cageside, splendidly outfitted and ever at home in her role as the women’s bantamweight champion. After upsetting Amanda Nunes at UFC 269, Peña’s victory lap took her all over God’s green earth, from “Good Morning America” to Mike Tyson’s podcast to Joe Rogan’s bunker to seats alongside Tom Brady, Justin Timberlake and Shaquille O’Neal at live events. She was a traveling one-woman exhibit on display, dutifully, so that everyone could get a heaping eyeful.
She even snapped a picture with President Donald Trump, whom she called the “greatest president since George Washington.” Washington hasn’t been in office since March 1797.
The thing is, Peña loved being the champion in the way that Dana White loves his ice plunges. If it was up to her, it would have gone on forever. So you can understand that when the music came to a full stop in Dallas at UFC 277, where she lost her rematch with Nunes and therefore coughed up her favorite accessory, life seemed to lose a little of its luster for Peña.
Now here we are, 25 long months later, and she’s finally getting her chance to get back to all those high-profile appearances when she fights for the 135-pound title Saturday at UFC 307, this time against Raquel Pennington. Peña sees herself as the shot of adrenaline the weight class needs to make it vital again.
“I feel like right now the bantamweight division is kind of a ghost town and there hasn’t been somebody properly representing it,” Peña says. “I want to bring life to that. I want to bring a sense of liveliness — a sense of reinvigorated energy and good vibes and be that face. It is nice to know the [UFC] has always had my back, and they send me to these events and they’re using me as their warrior to promote their business.”
If the seven-and-a-half months that she held the title went by in a flash, the last two years and change have dragged by with frustrating slowness. Peña was supposed to get the trilogy fight against Nunes at UFC 289 in mid-2023 but was forced to withdraw with a rib injury. That made way for Irene Aldana to step in and promptly get trampled by Nunes, who herself then abruptly “retired” right after the fight.
Peña, who was sitting helplessly cageside that night in Vancouver, not only missed her chance at winning the belt back, but she also seemingly watched the consensus GOAT of women’s MMA bid adieu to their rubber match. It was the old double whammy.
If that weren’t enough, when it came time for UFC to book a fight for the vacant title earlier this year, Peña wasn’t yet able to go, so they opted to have Pennington stand in against Mayra Bueno Silva. Pennington scored a somewhat drowsy unanimous decision over Silva to win the belt, and from there the division has moved on quietly without the “Venezuelan Vixen.”
Until now.
Peña’s title shot arrives at a very strange moment in the women’s bantamweight division, in that the champion feels like nothing more than an amuse-bouche for the pack of serious contenders. There’s the 35-year-old Peña, who gets the first crack at Pennington’s title in Salt Lake City on Saturday. There’s Kayla Harrison, the Olympic judoka and PFL champion who fights Ketlen Vieira in a likely title eliminator that same night. And then there’s Nunes, who is all but certain to come out of retirement now that so much activity is aswirl.
Conspicuously, everyone is casting their eyes on everyone else. Peña is eyeing that trilogy fight with Nunes, Nunes is tempted by a fight with her former gym partner Harrison, and Harrison sees them all the way a lion sees a slab of raw steak. Who gets who first, and who gets who next? And can Pennington spoil all of tomorrow’s parties?
These are the subplots of UFC 307.
“When you think about the greatest of all time in women’s mixed martial arts, everybody always says Amanda Nunes,” Peña says, thinking only of putting herself into the biggest fights possible. “Or when they think about who put the division on the map they’re thinking about Ronda Rousey. I want those [types of big] fights. I want the fights that are going to generate the most. I am a business-oriented type of person. I want the most for me, for them, for the company, for everyone. I want to grow mixed martial arts for women, in a way that gets more women involved.”
It could be said that Pennington’s rise to the top of the division is a shining example of perseverance, given that she debuted in the UFC back in 2013 as a nondescript .500 fighter (3-3), then suffered five more losses through her UFC journey, before putting together an unlikely six-fight win streak en route to her title.
Peña says that’s a nice trait for “Rocky” as a human being, but that’s not the real story of this fight.
“Raquel has earned that spot of being the bantamweight champion, and I respect that — I think that it’s awesome that she’s persevered,” she says. “But if anybody’s going to be the face of perseverance, it’s going to have to be me.”
It’s hard to argue with that. Peña’s UFC career is not an easy thing to describe. She’s not been what you’d call a prolific fighter. In fact, since winning “The Ultimate Fighter 18” in 2013, Christmas has shown up more than Peña, who has competed just 10 times in 11 years. She has been through numerous injuries, the most significant a blown-out knee in 2014 that sidelined her for a year. She has given birth to her daughter, Issa, and suffered a couple of highly visible losses against Valentina Shevchenko and Germaine de Randamie.
Yet she has also shocked the world as a 7-to-1 underdog in that first fight with Nunes. And it wasn’t just that she overthrew the most dominant champion in women’s MMA history, either — it was that she’d fearlessly called for the fight at a moment when it looked as though there were no viable contenders to test Nunes. There was something about how her audacity communicated her own self-belief that made her into the Fighter of the Year in 2021. Even though she’d been on the scene for years, nobody really gave her a chance.
The image of her tapping Nunes that night in Vegas at UFC 269 is one that lives in the fight world’s memory bank forever. You treat the women’s GOAT as a turnstile, you get to appear on as many Jumbotrons as will have you. And the only way for Peña to get the trilogy fight with Nunes is to get through “Rocky” on the edge of the western Rockies.
Peña’s not afraid to imagine the first act on her next victory lap, should she snap up the bantamweight title for a second time in Salt Lake.
“If I have to call out Amanda Nunes after Saturday night for that trilogy fight, which would be the biggest fight in women’s mixed martial arts history, I’m going to do that,” she says. “Because I’m thinking in a businesswoman’s mindset of what are the biggest fights that could possibly happen. For me, those are the fights that I want. Those are the fights that I think are going to draw. Those are the fights that I think are going to sell pay-per-views.”
Those are the fights that crank the music back up for the next world tour.
