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Andreas Hale, ESPN
ON SATURDAY MORNING, Raquel and Tecia Pennington will start their day as normal by having breakfast with their 16-month-old daughter, Alayah, and focusing on their parental duties, ranging from playing games to nap time in their Salt Lake City hotel. However, the rest of their day will be far from normal. After leaving Alayah in the care of the family, Raquel will get her hair braided by her mother in the locker room of the Delta Center, while Tecia will find a quiet place to plan for what’s ahead. The Penningtons will then put on their fight kits and prepare to compete inside the Octagon at UFC 307.
Tecia, 35, will face two-time strawweight champion Carla Esparza in a match that Esparza says will be her retirement fight. Eight fights later, Raquel, 36, will defend her women’s bantamweight championship against former champion Julianna Peña in the co-main event. It is arguably the biggest night of the Penningtons’ professional fighting careers as a unit, with a title defense and to stop a losing streak while bidding farewell to the UFC’s first 115-pound champion. However, the outcome won’t change their duties Sunday morning, as the Penningtons will slide back into their roles as partners and parents, albeit with a few possible bumps and bruises from the night before.
As MMA fighters for nearly half their lives, fighting is normal for Raquel and Tecia. But being a married couple with a toddler and also being professional fighters has presented a new world of challenges beyond training camps and fistfights. While they may have mastered the art of preparing for the possible damage that can happen inside of an eight-sided cage, they are still learning how to navigate the nuances of parenthood while maneuvering around criticism of being in a same-sex marriage.
“It’s all about balance,” Raquel told ESPN in a joint interview with Tecia. “We’ve learned how to navigate having a relationship [in MMA]. We’ve had to learn how to leave the job at the gym and be partners at home without bringing emotions into it. That was a big challenge [navigating a relationship as fighters], and now our new challenge is being fighters who are parents.”
Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate knows Raquel more than most. She went from coaching her on “The Ultimate Fighter” in 2013 to facing her in the Octagon in 2016. The two remain friends today and Tate is proud of her former TUF pupil evolving into a world champion. She also sees how sharing a fight card with her significant other can be as challenging as defending a title on Saturday night.
“I don’t think you can balance it, you compartmentalize,” Tate told ESPN. In 2015, she competed at the same UFC event with her now ex-boyfriend Bryan Caraway and remembers the quandary it put her in. “It’s too much to take in when two people in a relationship are on the same card. You can’t get sidetracked because fighting is such a self-centered sport. You want to be there for them, but you can’t because you still have a job to do. You have to be selfish.”
If Tecia had it her way, she wouldn’t share Saturday’s fight card with her wife. It’s not that they haven’t fought on the same card before, though. UFC 307 will mark the sixth time Tecia and Raquel have been on the same fight card (2012 and 2013 in Invicta FC and 2016, 2020 and 2022 in the UFC). They weren’t a couple at the earliest of those events, but each time they shared a card, they grew closer. Both fighters hold a 3-2 record in fights where they’ve shared a card. UFC 307 will mark the first time that Raquel and Tecia have competed as parents on the same night.
“It’s difficult for me emotionally,” Tecia told ESPN while noting that having her fight before Raquel’s will alleviate some of the stress. “I can worry about myself and fight first. Then I can worry about her. If it were the other way around, I don’t think I could focus on myself to get ready.”
Raquel and Tecia fighting together wasn’t something the UFC purposefully set out to do for storyline purposes. It just so happened that their timelines to compete aligned and Raquel nudged her wife to ask to be placed on the same card.
“I felt like it would be fun and easier for our coaches and family, they get a two-for-one deal,” Raquel said. “We’re on a unique journey together and I think it’s really cool to make these memories. It was my idea and she just rolled with it.”
Tecia nodded in agreement, though she didn’t look as confident.
“It’ll be fun fighting together as moms,” she said.
INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, FIGHTING is what brought them together in the first place.
Raquel and Tecia had become friends in 2013 while fighting in Invicta. While Raquel was smitten with Tecia, Tecia had yet to come out publicly and had a boyfriend. In 2015, Raquel invited Tecia to train with her in Colorado, and by 2016, they were in a relationship. It would be Tecia’s first same-sex relationship. By 2022, they were married, and their daughter was born a year later.
When Tecia came out to her parents, they went through an adjustment period. Eventually, they came around to accept the union of their daughter and Raquel. However, not everyone in the family was as accepting.
“I no longer speak with my sister because of my sexual orientation,” Tecia said, the pain of their distance felt through her words. “Our relationship has suffered, but the rest of the family has accepted us.”
Raquel’s journey to Tecia started as a teenager.
“I was living two different lives,” she said of her past. Raquel remembers herself as a “tomboy” growing up. She had a boyfriend, but also had romantic relationships with girls that she hid from her family. By her senior year of high school, Raquel knew it was time to tell her parents that she was gay. Unfortunately, coming out to her mother — whom she calls her best friend — didn’t go as well as she had hoped.
“It really tore us apart for a while,” she said, noting that her mother threw a Bible at her when she heard the news. “She thought it was a phase I was going through and would eventually end.”
It didn’t end. Instead, years later, on an episode of “The Ultimate Fighter,” Raquel shared with her castmates how coming out affected her relationship with her mother.
“When I first came out, my family wasn’t very happy, and my mom took it the hardest,” Pennington said in the episode. “Me and my mom got into a fight and my mom ended up calling my dad. And that’s when me and my dad started getting close because he was like ‘Dude, whoever you are, I accept it.'”
Having Raquel’s sexual orientation and her family conflict broadcast into homes across the country made her mother realize that she wasn’t going through “a phase.” This was her life. Rather than fight it, Rose Pennington let her guard down to learn the parts of her daughter that were hidden from her. Today, their bond is stronger than ever, and Rose plays an instrumental role in her granddaughter’s life.
Unfortunately, some people aren’t welcoming of the Penningtons. Raquel and Tecia’s social media accounts are filled with people negatively commenting on Alayah and direct messages questioning their marriage. A few MMA fighters have been vocal with their criticism, including former middleweight champion Sean Strickland and the woman who will attempt to take Raquel’s championship on Saturday.
During Peña’s reign as champion in 2022, she quipped that she was the UFC’s “first mom champ” due to her giving birth to her daughter. The words were targeted at Amanda Nunes, the since-retired champion who is a parent in a same-sex marriage but didn’t give birth to the child.
Those words still rub Raquel the wrong way.
“[I can’t believe] that another female fighter had the audacity to say she was the true mother champion,” Raquel said. As part of a tumultuous rivalry that dates back to their shared tenure on Season 18 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” Peña’s comments have added gasoline to the fire underneath Raquel.
“I don’t mean it like [Raquel’s] not a mother,” Peña told ESPN on Wednesday. “I just mean that Tecia’s a hell of a woman for going through those nine months of having that baby. And she knows what it’s like.”
“I’m just going to have to shut her up,” Raquel said.
TO SHUT PEÑA UP, Raquel will have to be at her fighting best.
When preparing for UFC 307, Raquel and Tecia’s striking coach, Justin Houghton, said that the couple deliberately kept their camps in Littleton, Colorado, separate. If Tecia trained in the morning, Raquel would take care of the parenting until her wife came home. They would then switch while the champion honed her craft at the gym in the evening. And while both have expressed interest in cornering for each other, UFC 307 might not be the right time, according to their team.
“We are keeping them separate on fight night,” Houghton said. “We want them ultra-locked in for their fights. They’ll be there to support each other during fight week but they need to be individuals on the night of the fight.”
Houghton has trained the couple for the past few years and noticed a marked improvement in Raquel’s physical and mental performance once Alayah was born.
“She used to get caught up in what people would say about her,” Haughton told ESPN. “But since Alayah has been here, she is only focused on being the best mom, partner and fighter. She realizes there is way more to the world than fighting. That little girl has helped them get rid of so much negativity in their lives. It’s only positive vibes and it has shown in her performances.”
Come Sunday morning, the hope in the Pennington household will be that Tecia has ended her two-fight skid and earned her first win in the Octagon as a mother and Raquel has brought the gold belt home. However, if things don’t turn out that way, the Penningtons will be all right.
“We are still writing the book of our lives and I’m truly embracing this chapter,” Raquel said. “I’ve found balance in my life, but I also know that we aren’t spring chickens. This isn’t going to last forever and when this chapter is over, I hope that it has helped someone with their life.”
“Fighting was once my ultimate priority,” Tecia said. “But now there is way more to life because after we’re done, it’s just Raquel, Tecia and Alayah. It’s all about our little family.”