This story just keeps getting more wild by the day. We reported that TUF 18 winner Julianna Pena was injured and had to withdraw from her UFC 171 bout with Jessica Andrade earlier this week. UFC President Dana White then spoke on the situation and basically said he was told that Pena had been ‘attacked’ by a male teammate at the gym:
And she was training in her gym and one of her training partners, a guy, was saying to her, ‘Oh you’re wearing your Ultimate Fighter shirt, we’re real scared.’ ….was basically talking smack to her, jumped on her back, started cranking her neck, and the way that she fell, her knee blew out. The most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard in my life. A year-and-a-half to two years she’ll be out.
However, a teammate, and TUF winner Michael Chiesa says that Pena wasn’t attacked at all and the whole situation was a simple training accident in a statement to MMAFighting:
Pena was never “attacked” by some guy. She was training with a 135er that she trains with on a regular basis. He wasn’t talking shit to her for wearing a TUF shirt, and if he was, it was light-hearted gym humor. They were rolling and he went for a move that he’s hit on her a thousand times before and it just happened. Nobody is to blame, it was a training accident. Just like Dominick Cruz. Everyone knows how hard she is to train with cause she’s so damn tough. She only has one female partner that can somewhat challenge her. Even on the show, she was training with guys on her team and, correct me if I’m wrong, they made a point to say how tough she is. She’s Cyborg-esque, I guess you could say, minus the PEDs.
Were a very close knit team here in Spokane, she was training with someone that she’s gone all the way to Canada to corner. She’s held this guy’s child, they are very close. This guy wasn’t some attacker or whatever the hell she said. This whole thing is tearing our team apart.
You know what they say, there are two sides to every story, and the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. The sad part is that she was on the cusp of a huge fight for her young career, and to have it sidelined with a major injury certainly makes the situation worse.