AUDIO | Julianna Pena says Ronda Rousey was not allowed to be hit in the face in camp, threatened training partners with $1M lawsuit

https://youtu.be/ytrcJz873vI?t=5m17s

#2 UFC ranked women’s bantamweight Julianna Pena is set to fight #1 UFC ranked Valentina Shevchenko at UFC on FOX 23 on January 28 in Denver Colorado.

With the winner likely the next title contender to face champion Amanda Nunes, Pena recently spoke with Matt Serra on the UFC Unfiltered podcast where she spoke about Nunes’ last fight against former UFC women’s bantamweight champion, Ronda Rousey. Pena predicted prior to the fight taking place that Nunes would knock Rousey out in their fight, which actually ended by TKO in the first round. Pena also commented on some interesting bits of information regarding Rousey’s training leading up to her fight against Nunes at UFC 207.

“I’m mostly trying to have some banter at Holly but at the same time you have got to giver her credit for being able to implement the gameplan against Ronda and that’s to keep her away at a distance and punch her in the face because she don’t like that and she’s not allowed to get hit in sparring,” said Pena (starting at 5:18 of the video). “These girls have to sign these waivers to say that ‘We never hit Ronda, and we’ll never talk about this type of training ever and all this stuff, you know? She’s not really taking the toll in the fight camp of getting punched in the face legitimately so she doesn’t really know what that feels like.”

Pena said that by seeing what Holm was able to do, she knew that Nunes would be able to implement the same gameplan and come out with the same result.

“I just think it’s one of those things where you’ve gotta protect the fighter and make sure she doesn’t get hurt before the fight,” Pena said of Rousey’s waivers for her training partners. “She’s a superstar and they don’t want to see her get any damage. So, it’s like whenever the girls would go hard on her, whenever they’d come forward and start banging it out on her, they’d tell them, ‘Hey. Knock it off. Stop it. Don’t hit her so hard and then sign this waiver and say that you were never here and that you never punched her. Don’t ever talk about how well you did in training and stuff like that because you have to sign this dotted line or else we’ll sue you for a million dollars.'”

Do you think Julianna Pena’s comments about Ronda Rousey’s training is accurate? Give us your thoughts on what Pena had to say in the comment section!

This article first appeared on 1/26/2017.