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Julianna Pena blasted Ronda Rousey in a no-holds-barred interview this week.
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Pena called Rousey a sellout for joining WWE before saying she’d welcome her back to UFC.
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Rousey “is kind of a joke in the MMA world,” according to Pena.
WWE superstar and former UFC champion Ronda Rousey is “kind of a joke in the MMA world now.”
That’s according to the Las Vegas-based promotion’s bantamweight queen Julianna Pena, who put Rousey on blast in a no-holds-barred interview with MMA Fighting this week.
Rousey competed in the WWE’s signature event of the year, WrestleMania, losing a pro wrestling match to Charlotte Flair in Dallas on Saturday.
Pena, who was ringside at the time, left the AT&T Stadium unimpressed with Rousey, despite her combat sports pedigree as a bronze medal-winning judoka at the 2008 Olympic Games, a dominant three-year reign as a champion in Strikeforce and UFC, and winner of a WWE title in 2018.
“Ronda is so old news, right?” Pena said, before praising her for blazing a trail that “opened up the door” for others to walk through.
Rousey “was destroying people in 10 seconds, and became a star because she was demolishing people in the first round, and that’s great,” Pena said. “But she got knocked out twice and never came back.”
After a six-fight winning streak in the UFC, Rousey suffered cataclysmic knockout losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes. “So how legit is she?” she asked.
Pena said that if Rousey were to ever return to UFC after her stint in WWE, then she “would welcome her with open arms” as the UFC’s newest bantamweight champ.
But Rousey’s decision to join the WWE rankles Pena. “She’s kind of a joke in the MMA world now, because she’s a — what is the word? — sellout,” Pena said.
“Like, a little bit of a sellout there. I mean, I guess I understand, right? It’s like, pro wrestling is fake, you get paid millions of dollars, I get it.
“But for me, for real shit, for like the ‘You’re the real, real deal,’ I would say that that’s in the UFC. And if she ever wants any of that real smoke, I’m ready.”
Pena has a pro MMA record of 11 wins (three knockouts, five submissions, and three decisions) against four losses.
She is renowned for her December 2021 victory over Nunes, in which she unseated the Brazilian from her UFC throne to win the bantamweight crown.
Pena and Nunes will serve as coaches on the 30th edition of The Ultimate Fighter and are expected to contest a rematch this summer.
Read the original article on Insider