UFC women’s bantamweight contender Kayla Harrison sees positives coming from Julianna Peña’s brash trash talk in the lead-up to their championship showdown.
Peña returned to the 135-pound mountaintop in the co-main event of the UFC 307 pay-per-view last October, narrowly outpointing Raquel Pennington in what marked a widely debated result.
Harrison, meanwhile, staked her claim for a shot against the winner earlier in the night when she got the better of Ketlen Vieira to move to 2-0 under the UFC banner.
While the champ attempted to set her sights on the retired Amanda Nunes instead, all signs pointed toward Harrison getting her first title shot in 2025, and that’ll come to fruition at UFC 316 in Newark on June 7.
Given how the pair exchanged words at the UFC 307 press conference, the lead-up could be entertaining. “The Venezuelan Vixen” has had plenty of negative things to say about the two-time Olympic gold medalist since her arrival to the promotion, and that trend continued at the UFC 316 launch presser in Miami.
During a recent appearance on the podcast of MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn, Harrison reflected on their on-stage exchanges and explained why she sees them as beneficial.
“I’m still trying to figure out what happened,” Kayla Harrison said. “It was a lot. I thought we were going to talk a little bit of sh*t. I was expecting us to have a little bit of fun with it, but she came out swinging and I was like – it kind of works in my favor because she talks so much that everybody just hates her.
“So I win a lot of fans when I’m just like, ‘All right, whatever, honey.’ She was talking about (Cris) Cyborg and running and grandmas and skinny and bloody and walking tacos, and I was like, ‘What is happening right now?’ We’ll see,” Harrison added.
