Interviews

Julianna Pena’s training partner Josh Gow clears the air on training injury

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It was big news over the past couple of weeks — The Ultimate Fighter winner Julianna Pena was involved in a serious training injury at her gym, Sik-Jitsu.

Julianna Pena’s training partner Josh Gow clears the air on training injury

UFC President Dana White had plenty to say about the situation including a tweet that read, “What happened to @VenezuelanVixen at “her gym” is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard. Ranked #10 out for 2 years.

Her training partners and current UFC fighters Sam Sicilia and Michael Chiesa gave their feedback on the situation, but no one had heard from the training partner that was involved. That is until now — MMASucka.com had an opportunity to chat with Josh Gow about what exactly happened to his friend and training partner Pena.

“Julianna text me and asked me if I was at the gym and I told her ‘yeah.’ Then she came in, got ready to go and I asked her if she was ready — we just started rolling and it was our first round. We were about two minutes in to it, it was just submission wrestling, grappling, rolling or whatever you want to call it and I took back position off the wall — as we were falling away from the wall, with my hooks in she was supporting my weight as I was going for a RNC, her knee twisted in a weird way and we are where we are at today. It was all really terrible.”

When the word ‘attacked’ was used, many thought this guy at the gym was a bully or a big male fighter. However, Pena and Gow both fight at the same 135-pound weight class. Pena, or “Jules” as her teammates call her had trained with Gow on a very regular basis and there was nothing different about this session than any other.

“Not at all, I train with Jules on a very regular basis. We were just going in there, it was a submission grappling bout and there was nothing different. It was slow paced, it was the first round and it was a freak accident, that’s all it was. There’s really nobody that can explain it, it was just a freak accident at the gym.”

The Sik-Jitsu name got dragged under the bus by White and he even said that she should ‘leave the gym now.’ Gow defends his team and still feels they have ‘a very good gym.’

“I don’t think Sikjitsu should have gotten drug under the radar. We have a very good gym — we’re very together as a gym, we may have an odd way of doing stuff, but we’ve produced three UFC fighters. We’re obviously doing something right.”

At 3-0 as a professional MMA fighter and looking to fight much more, Gow worries that his name will misconstrued. As a young professional fighter his overall goal is to obviously get in to the UFC and he hopes this doesn’t affect that.

“That’s what I’d like to clear up or had already cleared up. I want my name to be pronounced in a good way and not be remembered as somebody that hurt my training partner or that was in an accident with my training partner. It’s gotten blown out of proportion and I really think it’s pretty horrible of the media to have set somebody out as an attacker and not to get all the facts before coming out with all this stuff.”

This isn’t the first time a training accident has happened in a gym and it definitely won’t be the last. Gow feels extremely horrible about what happened to Pena and wants everyone to know that.

“I hope Julianna’s injury gets cleared up fast and she’s back at it as soon as she can.”

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Listen to the entire interview on this weeks episode of Sucka Radio HERE.

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Jeremy Brand started up this lovechild called MMASucka.com back in 2009. It began as a hobby project and has turned into much more. In his spare time, you can find Jeremy on the mats, as he is a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

1 comment

  • ShempLabs says:

    So, did Pena lie to Dana about what happened? Or, what exactly is it that these guys are saying? Perhaps it’s time for HER to talk.

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