Julianna Pena, the first female winner of The Ultimate Fighter 18 reality series, recently gave an interview in which she voiced her dislike for rival trainer and world champion fighter, Ronda Rousey, once again.
Rousey, a UFC bantamweight champion, coached a team on The Ultimate Fighter 18 opposite coach and off-screen rival Miesha Tate, who acted as Pena’s coach on the show. Rousey has been receiving a lot of bad press for how she comes off on the show, and Pena confirmed that appearances are, in fact, accurate, saying she felt Rousey was unfairly hard on her because she trained with Tate.
“As far as me personally, she had got into some spats with me, and she had some choice words to say to me to my face. She didn’t really rub me the right way. I felt like they were pinpointing me because I was guilty by association, so I didn’t necessarily like that,” Pena said during a press conference.
However, Pena made sure to point out that, professionally, she respects Rousey as a fighter and as someone who wasn’t afraid to be who she is in front of the cameras:
“I respect her as a fighter, and I think she’s a great athlete. I think that she came across as exactly how she is.”
Rousey is known for her vicious competitive streak. During a recent visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live, Rousey spoke about her technique of always winning a fight by putting her opponent in an arm hold, pulling the shoulder out of its socket. However, throughout the competition, it wasn’t her fighting style that rubbed Pena the wrong way, but Rousey’s “pretentious attitude."
“Whether Ronda has one penny or $10 million, the point that I was trying to draw there was that she has her nose in the air and she acts like she’s better than everyone else. She went on the show being like, ‘I’m team real mean versus fake nice.’ Well, if she was so real why did she tell me that I can’t breath the same air as her… It’s her arrogance, it’s the way that she holds herself… it doesn’t have anything to do with money, it’s the way that she acts.”
– Olivia Truffaut-Wong
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