Penick's Take
PENICK: Latest comments on Julianna Pena injury situation, inherent knee injury risks to female fighters
Jan 31, 2014 - 3:50:56 PM PENICK: Latest comments on Julianna Pena injury situation, inherent knee injury risks to female fighters

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

We've got another statement from a teammate of Julianna Pena's trying to refute the version of events relayed by UFC President Dana White, whose comments came after a conversation with Pena. This time it's her fellow Ultimate Fighter winner Michael Chiesa, who said Pena herself was "going hard as usual" and that it wasn't something that happened out of maliciousness from the person she was grappling with.

Chiesa released a statement on the matter on Friday, saying that it's tearing their team apart (via MMAFighting.com):

"Pena was never 'attacked' by some guy. She was training with a 135er that she trains with on a regular basis. He wasn't talking shit to her for wearing a TUF shirt, and if he was, it was light-hearted gym humor. They were rolling and he went for a move that he's hit on her a thousand times before and it just happened. Nobody is to blame, it was a training accident. Just like Dominick Cruz. Everyone knows how hard she is to train with cause she's so damn tough. She only has one female partner that can somewhat challenge her. Even on the show, she was training with guys on her team and, correct me if I'm wrong, they made a point to say how tough she is. She's Cyborg-esque, I guess you could say, minus the PEDs.

Were a very close knit team here in Spokane, she was training with someone that she's gone all the way to Canada to corner. She's held this guy's child, they are very close. This guy wasn't some attacker or whatever the hell she said. This whole thing is tearing our team apart."

Now, this is yet another description of the actual events of the injury which is making it hard to pin down just what happened, but at best it was a training session with fighters getting overzealous and an injury occurring.

There's something else to consider here, and that's the lack of a warmup factor. If that was the case, Pena was certainly open to injury regardless, but in particular, a leg injury may have already been a heightened risk.

A 2013 story in the Huffington Post by Michael Zazzali, a Board-certified orthopaedic specialist and a partner at Physical Therapy Associates of New York, LLC, discussed the more significant risk of ACL injury to female athletes, and it's interesting to consider in regards to Pena's case as well as the serious knee injury suffered by Cat Zingano last May and Miriam Nakamoto in Invicta FC in December.

Here are a couple of key passages regarding the issue which may be relevant in shedding light on why these injuries may have happened.

First, on anatomical issues for female athletes as opposed to their male counterparts:

"Females have some unique anatomical features that may predispose them to injury, including increased genu valgum (knock-knee alignment), a poor hamsting-quadricep strength ratio, running and landing on a more extended knee, quadriceps-dominant knee posture, and hip/core weakness. It has been hypothesized that hormonal changes associated with the female menstrual cycle may also play a role due to the release of relaxin hormone that induces added laxity to the body's ligamentous tissues.

Second, on the motion issues at play in these knee injuries:

"The common mechanism of non-contact ACL injuries is a valgus stress with rotation at the knee, which put simply means the knee is bowing inward on landing or cutting instead of being aligned properly. This valgus load can often be associated with a rotational stress at the knee, thus, it is vital for the female athlete to learn through neuromuscular training exercises to control this valgus moment."

These are for non-contact versions of this, of course, but in the case of Pena, the second paragraph especially may be key. If the story relayed by Sam Sicilia is an accurate descriptor, and the unnamed training partner took Pena's back with the injury occurring as she tried to hit a switch, it's easy to see how her legs may not have held up in that instance.

There are a lot of things at play in this particular incident, but injuries are certainly something that happen in gyms around the world consistently. In this case, we have an aggressive female fighter likely not training in the smartest fashion without a full warmup, but the story she relayed to White muddies things up a bit. Chiesa and Sicilia have told differing versions of the incident, but Sicilia wasn't present and Chiesa doesn't clarify whether or not he was.

Regardless, there's also the matter of Pena not refuting White's comments that he says she relayed to him. Chiesa, Sicilia, coach Rick Little, and anyone else from the gym wanting to pull damage control will do so, but Pena's version of things is very different entirely. Now, could she have over-exaggerated or dramatized what happened with how badly she got injured? It's certainly a possibility. But as White commented this week as well, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.

Some of the more vehement push-back is placing blame on Pena in many ways, while her initial version of the story was one of the victim. This particular training partner might not have been attempting to injure her maliciously, but there seems to be some tension regarding how hard she trains in general. If that was an issue, this fighter may have gotten overzealous while pushing back against that.

It's all speculation for anyone commenting on it who isn't Pena or this unnamed fighter in question. And many of the stories being put out right now are secondhand accounts at best. Still, a talented fighter is now on the sidelines for a considerable amount of time, and what should really come out of this is an increased look at ways to improve the ways in which camps and fighters train in order to curb the frequency of these types of issues.