After regaining the bantamweight title at UFC 307, what’s next for Julianna Pena?

This past Saturday in the co-main event of UFC 307, the women's bantamweight title was on the line. Raquel Pennington (16-9) was taking on the former champion Julianna Pena (11-5) is a grudge match that was over a decade in the making.

The first round was very competitive between these two. Neither fighter did anything spectacular but I really felt that Pennington did a better job of landing bigger shots. I gave the first round to Pennington. The next two rounds saw Julianna Pena use her grappling to pull ahead on the scorecards.

That said, Pena could not get the fight to the ground in the fourth and fifth. Instead, Pennington really took over in the striking and event dropped Pena in the fourth round. In the fifth round, Pena couldn't get anything going and Pennington really controlled the fight with her jab.

When the fight ended at UFC 307, I thought it was pretty clear that the fight was going to Pennington. In fact, not a single media member on MMA Decisions scored the fight for Pena. However, two of the three judges gave the fight to Pena and she regained the bantamweight title.

What's next after UFC 307?

I have never been the biggest advocate for Julianna Pena because I just don't believe she's that great. I'm all for self-promotion, but there's no substance to really back up Pena's claim that she's the greatest fighter of all time which she's deemed herself on a number of occasions.

Because she views herself as that, she called for the trilogy fight against Amanda Nunes in her post-fight interview. Of course, the former two-division UFC champion is retired and completely obliterated Pena in their rematch after gassing out and getting submitted in their first fight.

While that's what Pena called for, that's not what she's going to get. It's clear that her next challenger is going to be Kayla Harrison. Harrison defeated Ketlen Vieira earlier in the evening and the UFC even did a split screen with Harrison while Pena was doing her post-fight interview. My guess is that these two will likely fight in January or February for the bantamweight title.