New mom Raquel Pennington takes advantage of Amanda Nunes' retirement to call out Julianna Pena

UFC bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes shocked the mixed martial arts world with her retirement at UFC 289. She was dominant in yet another title defense and completed a sixth successful defense in the bantamweight division against Irene Aldana.

Aldana took up the fight just a month prior as a replacement for No.1 contender Julianna Pena. Pena was ruled out of the trilogy meeting with Nunes after suffering broken ribs during fight camp. In light of Nunes' retirement, the bantamweight and featherweight titles will be vacant and up for grabs.

No.2 ranked bantamweight contender Raquel Pennington capitalized on Nunes' announcement and made a call-out to the next in line, Pena. Pennington took to Twitter to challenge the former champion.

She invoked their shared appearance on The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) in 2013 and spoke about how similar their paths to the top of the division have been. 'Rocky' tagged UFC president Dana White and UFC matchmaker Mick Maynard in her tweet.

She wrote:

"Me vs Julianna got the world title!!!! Dana always thought from TUF we would face each other at the finale. Wasn’t the journey then but here we are now!!! @danawhite @Mickmaynard2 @ufc"

Check out her tweet below:

Pennington recently became a parent to a baby girl with her wife and fellow UFC fighter Tecia Torres. The baby was born 10 days ago on June 1, 2023.

Check out the post below:

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Amanda Nunes explains her decision to retire from mixed martial arts

Amanda Nunes retires from mixed martial arts as a champion across two divisions, bantamweight, and featherweight. She is also the No.1 pound-for-pound women's fighter in the UFC.

However, all the records and accolades do not take precedence over her family, who are the reason Nunes is calling it a day in the sport. She explained as much in her post-fight octagon interview to Daniel Cormier and was also grateful to the promotion.

"My mommy be asking me to do this for so long. She cannot take anymore. My family as well, Nina. She has been around for so much with me. So I decided right now. I see that we don't get to enjoy everyday that I make. I gotta be with my family. I gotta spend time with my family in Brazil as well, I leave them so young to chase this dream...I just wanna thank Dana for always being there for me, Hunter and everybody that is making these shows happen."

Check out Amanda Nunes' post-fight octagon interview below: