Julianna Pena explains how Sam Sicilia saved her in a wild bar fight
The lesson? Don’t start a fight unless you’re absolutely sure it’s not with a group of MMA fighters.
Julianna Pena is here this week supporting teammate Sam Sicilia in his fight with Cole Miller at UFC Fight Night: Rockhold vs. Philippou on Wednesday night at Gwinnett Center. And why wouldn’t she? Sicilia has had her back for years – like that time on Halloween when he destroyed three dudes who tried to mess with her outside a bar.
Pena said that a few years ago, she, Sicilia, fellow UFC fighter Michael Chiesa and a few others from their gym in Washington went to downtown Spokane to party – a normal Halloween occurrence. All night, Pena was playing with a fake zombie hand and joking around with people.
“I kept messing with everybody,” Pena told FOX Sports with a laugh. “They’d be like, ‘Oh, that girl’s hot’ and I’d be like, ‘yeah, right’ and I’d go stick the zombie hand up her skirt or something like that. And just like try to piss them off. Sticking it in their ear and they turn around, like ‘what was that?’”
Pena, the first female winner of The Ultimate Fighter, kept at it after the bar closed and everyone was leaving. Until one girl got angry and came at her.
“That’s what started it and then all of a sudden a big huge street brawl ended up happening,” Pena said.
In the melee, Pena was pushed hard to the ground by a guy intentionally, prompting Sicilia to lose his mind. He wasn’t going to let his female teammate be assaulted.
“Sam went like Hulkamania, ripped off his shirt and I swear to God, like Mike Tyson, knocked three dudes out,” Pena said. “All of a sudden these guys were sleeping on the floor. One guy wakes up holding his eye and goes: ‘All I want to know is, who hit me?’ Then we high-tailed it out of there. It was pretty funny.”
When Sam Sicilia makes contact, opponents go down.
One of the members of their crew ended up being arrested, but then quickly let go, because the group that started the fight was known as instigators in that area.
Most importantly, Pena’s Pocahontas costume was preserved (“I loved it,” she said), which is more than can be said of the wannabe bar brawlers’ egos.
Miller better make sure not to offend Pena in any way before Wednesday night or Sicilia might go into beast mode again.
“They thought we were just some skinny weirdos,” Pena said of that Halloween night. “The moral of the story is, don’t start a fight with a bunch of fighters.”
