The MMA community is still buzzing about the UFC 224 main event and that too for all the wrong reasons. The fight turned out to be a controversial one after Raquel Pennington’s coaches decided to send her out for the fifth round even after she said that she was done after the fourth.
Pennington then ended up getting brutally finished by Amanda Nunes in the fifth round. This sparked a debate on whether or not Pennington’s coach should’ve sent her out in the first place.
While Pennington and Tecia Torres came out in support of the coaches and said that they completely agreed with the decision, a portion of the MMA Community was still not convinced. Now, Pennington’s head coach Jason Kutz himself has come out with a statement.
Why the decision was made
Kutz was interviewed by MMA Junkie recently and he opened up about the incident during the appearance.
“In my mind, I had it as more of a mental battle than physical battle for her going into the fifth round. And knowing her and coaching her for years, and knowing what she’s capable of, I felt if she flipped the script and did a 180 in her own mind, and just went for it, hey, you never know. I always tell her, in 10 years, yeah, you were losing the fight, but you look back at this, you look back at that moment in your life, and you would be asking yourself, what if? What if I’d went out there and something clicked and I had the best round ever and won the title? And now, she doesn’t have to do that in 10 years. She knows. I think that’s huge. I think her battle wounds from this fight, they’ll heal. But she gave her best effort that she could possibly give on that day, under those circumstances. What more as an athlete, what more as a coach, can somebody ask?” he said. (via MMA Mania)
This was Pennington’s first fight in more than a year and it would be interesting to see how she bounces back from this defeat against Nunes.
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