Juliana Pena teammate: ‘Horrible’ media reported without full facts
“I really think it’s pretty horrible of the media to have set somebody out as an attacker and not to get all the facts before coming out with all this stuff.”
Last week TUF season 18 winner Julianna Pena tore her ACL, MCL, LCL, Meniscus and hamstring, in what her coach Rick Little said was the most horrific injury he had ever seen. UFC president Dana White spoke with her and reported she will be out for two years.
White was also highly critical words of the gym, Spokane, Washington’s Sik-Jitsu Fighting Systems. Other fighters from the gym include Michael Chiesa and Sam Sicilia.
There are conflicting narratives of what happened.
According to one account, the injury happened during a grappling training session with Josh Gow. The 5′ 5″ 135 lb male pro fighter reportedly took her back from standing. Pena’s knee locked up on the mat in an exchange and hyper-extended, which caused the knee to buckle underneath her.
However, White offered a starkly different account, as related to him by a tearful Pena.
That’s so far from the story she told me right after it happened when she was hysterically crying, said White. Completely opposite. … Somewhere in the middle lies the truth. You know what I mean?
Now Gow offers his side of what happened, in an interview with MMASucka founder Jeremy Brand.
Julianna text me and asked me if I was at the gym and I told her ‘yeah.’ Then she came in, got ready to go and I asked her if she was ready — we just started rolling and it was our first round. We were about two minutes in to it, it was just submission wrestling, grappling, rolling or whatever you want to call it and I took back position off the wall — as we were falling away from the wall, with my hooks in she was supporting my weight as I was going for a RNC, her knee twisted in a weird way and we are where we are at today. It was all really terrible.
“I train with Jules on a very regular basis. We were just going in there, it was a submission grappling bout and there was nothing different. It was slow paced, it was the first round and it was a freak accident, that’s all it was. There’s really nobody that can explain it, it was just a freak accident at the gym.
I don’t think Sikjitsu should have gotten drug under the radar. We have a very good gym — we’re very together as a gym, we may have an odd way of doing stuff, but we’ve produced three UFC fighters. We’re obviously doing something right.
I want my name to be pronounced in a good way and not be remembered as somebody that hurt my training partner or that was in an accident with my training partner. It’s gotten blown out of proportion and I really think it’s pretty horrible of the media to have set somebody out as an attacker and not to get all the facts before coming out with all this stuff.
I hope Julianna’s injury gets cleared up fast and she’s back at it as soon as she can.