Julianna Peña advises female fighters to avoid wearing fake eyelash extensions during fights, citing personal experience and a recent incident where Tracy Cortez‘s eyelash flew off during a bout.
Julianna Peña has some important advice for female fighters: Keep it all-natural in the cage.
At UFC Denver, the main event bout between flyweights Rose Namajunas and Tracy Cortez went viral. A punch from Namajunas sent a fake eyelash flying off Cortez’s face. Namajunas won a five-round unanimous decision, but social media buzzed about that strange moment.
Peña, a former bantamweight champion aiming for UFC gold again soon, shared her own experience with facial cosmetics. She explained why she would never wear them on fight night.
“As you know, hair and makeup, that’s my jam,” Peña said on The MMA Hour. “Love it, love it, love it. I got my eyelashes done in training. Fake eyelash extensions—each individual lash stuck on.”
“When one of them broke off, it stabbed me in the eyeball,” she continued. “It was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever had in my life.” Hence, she’s a strip girl now—only strip lashes for her.
“I only put the glue on and take them off every time,” Peña added. “I never wear them in training and I’ve never worn fake extensions while fighting for that reason.”
“Now, some of these girls… I don’t know how or why they’re doing it,” Peña mused. “Maybe it just hasn’t happened to them yet.” But as we saw with Cortez—it just went flying.
The circumstances leading to Cortez’s eyelash malfunction puzzled Peña. She wondered why Cortez praised her technician so much on social media.
Peña tried to deduce where the flyweight contender went wrong. “I saw the whole thing go flying,” she said. “How does that even happen?”
“What I think is something must have happened,” Peña speculated. Maybe they took out the extensions on just that eye and quickly covered it up with a strip lash.
“If it wasn’t a strip lash, then her lash tech isn’t that good because I saw the whole thing go,” she noted. It wasn’t like a couple flaking off; it was the entire lash.
“So anyways, ladies,” Peña advised, “if you’re listening, please do me a favor—don’t fight with eyelash extensions on.” It’s just a no-no.
When asked if commissions should prevent such accidents in the future, Peña disagreed. She doesn’t think those cosmetic decisions require official oversight.
She hopes other women use common sense when figuring out how made-up they need to be for their fights.
“I don’t anticipate eyelash extensions being something they inspect,” Peña said with a chuckle. “Can you imagine? ‘Are these real? Are these yours?’”
“No mascara, no eyelash extensions,” she concluded firmly. “You’re a warrior; you’re a barbarian. This is like gladiator times.”