TUF 27’s Luis Pena Says MMA Is Easy After Surviving Car Accident

Ultimate Fighter 27 contestant Luis Pena recently spoke with MMA Junkie Radio about his near death experience ina car accident and more…

On The Accident: “I’m going down the highway, merging from the center lane to the far west lane, and as I merged, my back left tire blew out, and it sent the back half of my car in the air,” Pena told MMAjunkie Radio. “And when it hit the ground, I started fish-tailing, and I ran my car into the side guard rail. That popped me into the air, and I did a bunch of rolls into the other guardrail. I stuck my car into the guardrail so hard that that when the first responders got there, they had to cut it out with the ‘Jaws of Life’,” Pena said. ” … I remember I kicked the window out and crawled out. And there’s just like a wall of cars and people outside of their cars looking at me like I was some alien or something, walking toward them.”

On Thinking He’d Die: “I remember I’m rolling in the air, and I kind of accepted the fact that, here, any second, I was probably going to die,” Pena said. “Ever since then, I kind of just like – fighting’s been really easy. It’s really easy to go out there and just throw hands.”

On His Bond With Cormier’s boxing aid, Rosendo Sanchez: “Honestly, a lot of my movement – the back, and a lot of my turns (in Wednesday’s fight) were from his help,” Pena said. “Because, when I came into the house, I would kind of just use my range to get into the pocket and stay in the pocket. And try to use my range from the pocket, and stay in the pocket too long. Rosendo had me coming in and doing what I do, but then backing out, circling and then coming back in with counters and stuff. I’ll say, a lot of that came from Rosendo.”