UFC President Dana White is furious with a gym incident that caused the season 18 winner of The Ultimate Fighter, Julianna Pena, to tear her ACL, MCL, LCL and meniscus on Wednesday.
After venting on social media, where White implored “The Venezuelan Vixen” to leave the Sik-Jitsu Fighting Systems school in Spokane, Washington, he elaborated on the incident in a UFC 169 media scrum on Thursday.
“Apparently, when she came into the gym -- and again, she was hysterical when I talked to her, crying -- she was training in her gym and one of her training partners, a guy, was saying to her, ‘oh, you’re wearing your Ultimate Fighter shirt, we’re real scared,” White said.
"He jumped on her back, started cranking her neck, and the way she fell her knee blew out. The most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard in my life. A year-and-a-half to two years she’ll be out, and I told her to leave that disgusting gym and go somewhere else with new coaches, new training partners, whatever. And that’s all I know."
The gym’s head coach, Rick Little, told a completely different story on what happened to his star pupil.
According to Little, Pena didn’t properly warm up before training with some male fighters before the incident occurred.
White didn’t believe that version of the story based on his conversation with Pena, later saying the incident “sounds like assault to me,” but noted that it’s hard to call a physical altercation inside a gym assault.
Pena won TUF 18 in November, defeating experienced striker Jessica Rakoczy via TKO with just a second left in the first round.
At 24 years old, Pena has a 5-2 professional record and missed most of 2012 due to injuries sustained when a drunk driver knocked over a tree, which knocked her unconscious and broke her nose as she was walking on the sidewalk.