Julianna Peña recalls ‘excruciating pain’ from fake eyelash accident, cautions Tracy Cortez

Julianna Peña has some important advice for female fighters: Keep it all-natural in the cage.

At UFC Denver, the main event bout between flyweights Rose Namajunas and Tracy Cortez went viral when a punch from Namajunas sent a fake eyelash flying off of Cortez’s face. Namajunas went on to win a five-round unanimous decision, but social media was still buzzing about the strange moment in the aftermath of the contest.

Peña, a former bantamweight champion who hopes to fight for UFC gold again soon, shared her own experience with facial cosmetics and why she would never wear them on fight night.

“As you know, hair and makeup, that’s my jam,” Peña said on The MMA Hour. “Love it, love it, love it, love it. I got my eyelashes done in training. Fake eyelash extensions, so they had to stick on each individual lash. When one of them broke off, it stabbed me in the eyeball and it was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever had in my life. Therefore, I’m a strip girl — I only wear strip lashes. I only put the glue on and I take them on and off every time. I never wear them in training and I’ve never worn fake extensions while I’m fighting for that reason.

“Now, some of these girls, I don’t know how or why they’re doing it, or maybe it just hasn’t happened to them yet to the point that they think that they can just get away with continuing to fight with fake eyelash extensions. But as we saw, it just went flying.”

The circumstances that led to Cortez’s eyelash malfunction are confusing to Peña, who wonders why Cortez was so effusive with her praise on social media for the technician that provided the extensions.

Peña did her best to deduce where the flyweight contender went wrong.

“I saw the whole thing go flying,” Peña said. “How does that even happen? What I think is that something must have happened. They must have taken the eyelash extensions out on just that eye and covered it up really quick with the actual strip lash, because I saw the whole lash go flying, and if it wasn’t a strip lash, then her lash tech is actually not that good because I saw the whole thing go. It’s not like a couple that flake off and stab you in the eye, it was the whole thing.

“So anyways, ladies, if you’re listening, please do me a favor, don’t fight with the eyelash extensions on. It’s just a no-no.”

When asked if commissions should be the ones to prevent these accidents happening in the future, Peña disagreed that those cosmetic decisions require official oversight. She hopes other women just use common sense when figuring out how made up they need to be for their fights.

“I don’t anticipate eyelash extensions being a thing [they inspect],” Peña said. “Can you imagine they’re going to come in there and be like, ‘Are these real? Are these yours?’

“No mascara, no eyelash extensions. You’re a warrior, you’re a barbarian. This is like gladiator times.”