Raquel Pennington (16-8) is defending her UFC Women’s Bantamweight title for the first time on October 5. Her challenger is former champ Juliana Pena (11-5), who last fought more than two years ago when we saw her lose the championship belt to legendary Amanda Nunes.
Raquel Pennington is a 36-year-old fighter from Colorado, who’s 16-8 overall. Losing one-third of her fights may sound bad, but there’s a caveat. All of her losses happened against elite opponents, including Amanda Nunes, Holly Holm, Jessica Andrade, etc.
Although she’s already in her mid-30s, Raquel Pennington seems to be in her prime. In fact, she’s 6-0 in her last six fights. What’s interesting is that all of those lasted until the final bell, showing that she’s a smart, tactical fighter with amazing stamina.
Skills-wise, her strongest weapon is striking. She lands 4.14 significant strikes per minute, although she’s not too powerful based on the fact that only one of her 16 wins happened by TKO. This happened in her first-ever professional MMA fight, back in 2012.
Pennington is also a fine wrestler, landing 0.90 takedowns per 15 minutes. Her grappling is also decent, especially when it comes to defending against submissions. In her most recent fight – against Mayra Bueno Silva – her opponent made three submission attempts but failed to finish her.
Julianna Pena is 11-5 overall, but she hasn’t fought since the summer of 2022. That’s when she lost the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship belt to Amanda Nunes, the fighter she defeated in the title fight a few months earlier.
When she defeated Nunes, she did it by submission. It was her fifth submission win, which seems to be her favorite method. Pena just loves fighting in the clinch and on the ground, the evidence being that she lands just under 2 takedowns per fight.
She’s also a very decent striker, but her punches and kicks aren’t too powerful. In fact, she’s never KO-ed an opponent, but she did get three wins by TKO.
