UFC 224 dredged up some controversy when headlining UFC women’s bantamweight Raquel Pennington informed her corner after the fourth round that she was “done,” only for her corner to convince her to fight in the final round. Now reigning UFC women’s strawweight champion Rose Namajunas has come forward with her thoughts on the matter.
Raquel Pennington was facing off against women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes for the match, ultimately suffering a TKO loss in the final round. Speaking on the UFC Unfiltered podcast, Rose Namajunas offered her thoughts on the controversy behind the fight.
“From knowing Raquel personally, I can see how that would be the case because there are times, just from watching her train, you can see when she’s not into it and then all of a sudden she just comes out of nowhere. So I can see from maybe that point of view from just knowing their fighter.”
“From my perspective, if I say that I’m done, I would hope and I trust that my corner would throw in the towel for me. It’s a tough situation. And when you’re getting beat up like that, it’s tough. I don’t know. I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” she said. “For me, if I say that I’m done, I’m done.
“I will say, the circumstances, you have to treat each fight a little bit differently. It being a title fight, it being like Raquel is super experienced. Sometimes, I could tell just watching her train, sometimes she doesn’t seem like the most motivated and every once in a while she gets a spark in her. So those specific circumstances, I could see how that would play out, but at the same time, for me, I’m super paranoid about just the physical aspect of everything. For me, it’s a little bit different.”
