Julianna Pena almost had a fiery confrontation with Amanda Nunes last Saturday night, but she reveals her coach talked her out of it.
There was a part of me that wanted to storm the cage: Julianna Pena
“The Venezuelan Vixen” was originally slated for a trilogy fight with Nunes for the main event of UFC 289 last weekend, but was forced to pull out of the bout due to an injury and was replaced by Irene Aldana on short notice.
The main event saw the domination from “The Lioness” as she defended her Bantamweight crown once again, winning the bout via unanimous decision. While many expected the result, the unexpected occurred after the fight.
To the surprise of everyone, including Pena who was cageside, Nunes announced her retirement from MMA. Seeing her longtime rival dropping the curtain on her career without their much anticipated trilogy ever happening, Pena revealed to The MMA Hour that she was almost about to storm the cage while Nunes was giving her retirement speech, but was only convinced by her coach to not do so and make things uglier.
“Well, there was a part of me that wanted to storm the cage,” said Pena. “I had so many people that were like ‘Yes! We’ll do it, we’ll throw you over the gate’ ya know? But then my coach Wayne was like ‘Don’t do it, be classy and don’t do it’, so I let her have my moment. But it was really difficult for me because there were so many times where my urge was to go.”
While she admits it was difficult to let her rival leave the sport, Pena insists that with Nunes gone, the bantamweight division will be entering into a new era- the “Pena Power” era.
“Like, ‘Go, go, go, now’s the time’ but you know at the end of the day, she’s retired. She’s off into the sunset, and she’s dead to me at this point. We just got to keep the division moving, and now we’re stepping into day one of the Pena Power era,” she added. [H/T BJPenn.com]
Purchase the UFC merch here.
Click to Predict here.
SHARE
