Raquel Pennington’s coaches received quite a bit of criticism from both MMA fans and fighters after they pushed her to continue her battle against Amanda Nunes at UFC 224 even though she said she was done.
But Pennington is glad her coaches didn’t let her give up.
“I would’ve been mad,” Pennington told Ariel Helwani on today’s episode of The MMA Hour. “and I would’ve been more mad at myself, so I’m glad that my coaches didn’t let me give up on myself.”
Pennington took on Nunes in the main event of UFC 224 on Saturday night. The match was for the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship. Raquel’s nose was misshapen, and between rounds four and five she told her team that she was “done.” Her coaches, however, insisted that she continue. Pennington was TKO’d by Nunes minutes later in the fifth round.
“Everybody needs to relax,” Pennington said about her critics. “A fight’s a fight, and at the end day, we have our coaching staff. I’ve taken years to build up trust with my coaching staff and I know that I have awesome people in my corner. Like I said, it’s not an easy sport to go through and do, and sometimes things go your way, sometimes things don’t go your way. At the end of the day, it was a f*cking awesome opportunity and I’m proud that, knowing what I went through in the first round, that I freaking hung in there for as long as I did and I’m proud of my coaches for being there for me, and to keep pushing me and to let me give up on myself.
“Because at the end of the day, quitting like that on yourself — it would’ve been more brutal if they would’ve sat there and threw the towel in, instead of actually letting me make the decision that I made in the fifth round. So, stop judging from the outside, because you’ll never understand what goes on unless you’re in our shoes and in our position.”
