Julianna Peña fought Kayla Harrison at UFC 316 with 'pretty severe handicap'

USA Today

18-06-2025

Julianna Peña fought Kayla Harrison at UFC 316 with 'pretty severe handicap'
According to Julianna Peña, she was compromised while fighting Kayla Harrison at UFC 316.
Peña (13-6 MMA, 8-4 UFC) lost her bantamweight title to Harrison in the UFC 316 co-main event earlier this month after being taken down and submitted in the second round. In an emotional interview, Peña discussed her struggles in fight camp, which almost had her contemplating pulling out.
"I was plagued with several injuries leading up to that fight," Peña said Tuesday on "The Ariel Helwani Show." "It was not a good camp for me in that sense because I knew that I was going into the fight with a pretty severe handicap. It crossed my mind (to pull out), but it was not bad enough to the point where I would have to not fight because I knew I was going to be able to push through.
"But it's a funny thing that my coaches probably didn't explain the severity of the situation to me, otherwise I would have thought more heavily on not competing. No, I don't regret competing. I put in too much time. I've taken away too much time from other people, from my daughter, from my coaches, and from their families. So I don't regret competing. I just wish I could have competed under better circumstances."
Peña opened up on the extent of her injuries.
"About the second week of May, I broke my thumb on my training partner, and it was swollen," Peña said. "It looked like someone hit me in the hand with a hammer, and it was really difficult to grip. It still is right now very difficult to grip and to have grip strength. But then the 29th of May, I took a really bad fall in the octagon, and I tore my elbow and broke off a ton of bone chips so that I wasn't able to straighten my arm or bend my arm fully. I worked on that for a few days before I left to fight week, but everyday it was just worse and worse and worse.
"It looked like someone whacked me in the back of the elbow with a baseball bat. It was just so swollen, and the MRI, the x-rays showed a tear and a lot of bone chips in the back of that. So going into a fight 10 days out after having a tear like that and all those bone chips, it's just excruciating, and it's very painful. It's hard to throw a punch, it's hard to extend, it's hard to grip, it's hard to bend. It's just all-around very painful. I'm having surgery for that in July, and I'm going to clean that up."