Julianna Peña changes tune on significance of Kayla Harrison fight vs. Amanda Nunes trilogy

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Julianna Pena has seemingly moved on from the Amanda Nunes rubber match.

Peña (13-5 MMA, 8-3 UFC) long has campaigned for a third fight with Nunes after they split their first two championship appearances. However, with Nunes retired, Peña never got her opportunity to settle the score.

After dethroning Raquel Pennington to become champion at UFC 307, Peña dismissed Kayla Harrison (18-1 MMA, 2-0 UFC) and called out Nunes. However, Peña now has changed her tune and values a win over Harrison more than beating Nunes a second time.

“Kayla Harrison absolutely, because that’s fresh, that’s current,” Peña said on the “Overdogs Podcast.” “I don’t want to be living in the past, I don’t want to be stuck in the past. I want to be moving forward and keep things pushing over here, and that’s Kayla Harrison. That’s the one that I have my eyes on. That’s my target, that’s my goal, and it would mean the most to me. And I’m not unfamiliar to this territory. I was an 11-to-1 underdog with Amanda Nunes, so 7-to-1, that’s pretty good.”

Peña has opened up as a big underdog against Harrison. She theorizes why she’s constantly underestimated despite being a two-time UFC bantamweight champion.

“I think that one of the reasons why I’m a 7-to-1 underdog or why I always get overlooked or why people are always counting me out is because maybe I’m not the most technically sound,” Peña said. “Maybe I don’t throw the rock ’em, sock ’em punches perfectly and make everything perfect where I’m just so technical. Maybe I didn’t train martial arts or throw my very first punch until I was 19 years old and never was in wrestling as a young kid or judo as a young kid or was never in any martial arts until that time of throwing a punch for the first time at 19 years old and maybe don’t have the experience that these other girls have. But I’ve always had this one thing that has set me apart from everybody else, and that is my mindset and the mental toughness, the grit and the belief in myself that I can do anything, and I’ve never put a ceiling on myself as far as what I’m capable of doing.

“I have always believed that I can, and when you have that mental toughness of I don’t care what you do, I’m still going to get up, and I’m still going to keep coming at you a million miles an hour, it’s really hard to defeat someone like that. When you throw the kitchen sink at someone and they say, ‘Is that all you got?’ It’s mentally defeating for them and it’s like, ‘What do I got to do kill this person?’ And I’m just on the other side like Terminator. You’re going to have to literally cut my head off in order to get me to stop because I will not stop, and I think that attitude of never giving up or never stopping and always being relentless no matter what is kind of why I’ve had any amount of success that I’ve had, because I might get thrown on my head, but then you’re going to have to be careful about what I do after I get thrown on my head. I may get taken down, but then you’re going to have to be worrying about you getting elbowed in the face or punched because I’m not going to lay down, and I will not lay down.”