Raquel Pennington talks 2022 plans, starting a family, and Amanda Nunes losing to Julianna Peña
Raquel Pennington has had plenty of ups and downs throughout her career.
As far downs, there were things like a USADA suspension, a UFC title loss and tough stretch where she lost three of four fights.
While the downs are upsetting, the ups of her career have been great ones like earning a title fight, posting a win over a former champion, competing against the best in world on a regular basis and making a lot of friends along the way.
Now going through it all, Pennington believes she’s the strongest mentally that she’s ever been and she credits that to the impressive run she’s on right now.
In December at UFC Vegas 45, which was the UFC’s last event of 2021, Pennington took on Macy Chiasson in what ended up being Pennington’s featherweight debut. In the second round off their fight, Pennington was able to lock in a guillotine choke and end 2021 with another victory.
The win puts Pennington on a three-fight winning streak, which is the second longest winning streak of her career. Now sitting at No. 7 in the official UFC bantamweight rankings, the UFC veteran will now look to make her way back to a title shot, even in that means experimenting some more at 145-pounds.
Following her victory, Pennington spoke with MyMMANews about the UFC Vegas 45 win, her current winning streak and her plans to keep the momentum rolling in 2022.
Aside from talking about her fighting career, Pennington also opened up on a number of topics.
Recently, Pennington had a IVF Egg Retrieval procedure done and she talked about her journey of going through the procedure and how excited she is to eventually be a mom one day.
She also discussed Julianna Peña upsetting Amanda Nunes for the bantamweight championship and how she disagreed with Peña’s comments following the fight that Nunes shouldn’t be the first mom champ in the UFC since Nunes didn’t carry her baby.
You can watch the full interview in the video above.