Colorado Springs native brings home UFC hardware

(COLORADO SPRINGS)  — Raquel Pennington, a Colorado Springs native, returned home Jan. 22 with a UFC world champion belt, but her journey has not been easy.

“Fighting was honestly, it was a joke at first. I grew up a huge tomboy, I think when I was 11 or 12, I asked my mom if I can box and my parents were like, ‘You’re too pretty and your teeth are too nice. No’,” said UFC 297 world champion, Pennington.

The one word a child never wants to hear, did not hold her back.

She took her fighting to the next level in 2010, however there was some hesitation at first.

“When I decided to go pro, you know, my coach for a while, he was saying, ‘Hey, let’s go pro, let’s go pro’ and I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to go pro’ and then finally when I decided to go pro, I told my mom I was like, you know, I’m going to quit my job,” said Pennington.

And her life has changed ever since.

In 2018, Pennington made it to the UFC semi-finals, but things did not play out in her favor.

“If your head and your heart ain’t right it doesn’t matter, like you can go to the gym, you can eat all the food, you can take all the vitamins,” said Pennington. “But if your head and your heart ain’t right, it’s not going to matter. And for me, my head and my heart wasn’t right. It just wasn’t my time.”

From there, she put in countless hours of training, putting her body to the test up until Jan. 20, when she was given the chance to be the best in the world. The fight was Pennington vs. Mayra Bueno Silva.

“It’s not just this fight we’ve been working hard for. She’s been working hard for 14 years. You know, we’ve been working hard together for four years. And it’s a lot. It’s a lot, but it’s something that I always tell her, you know, it’s going to be worth it,” said Raquel’s Jiu Jitsu coach, Tyler Larsen.

Larsen has been a coach of Raquel’s since 2020 and has known she would be a world champion, it was just a matter of time.

“From the moment I met her I knew she was a fighter, I thought, you know, this person could be a world champion 100%,” said Larsen.

Pennington proved him right.

“I can’t find the words, but I just know that, like, I’m so proud of myself and everything that I’ve accomplished, you know, I’ve had a team behind me, I’ve had a family behind me, I’ve had a support system,” said Pennington.

Pennington shared she is taking some time to soak everything in with her family and her wife, Tecia Torres, who is also a fighter who she wants to help train.

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