Criticism as UFC 224 fighter says she’s ‘done’ but her corner sends her back out in brutal beating

Pennington had gamely contested the first 20 minutes against the UFC’s bantamweight champion in their title fight on Saturday, but she paid for it with a nose that was the most visible sign of the damage inflicted by Nunes’s torrent of punches and kicks. As she sat in her corner after the fourth round, she told her coaches, “I’m done.”

“I want to be done,” she added.

“No, no, no,” the 29-year-old was told. “Let’s power through this. Let’s believe. Change your mind-set. Change your mind-set. Let’s just throw everything we got. We’ll recover later. Throw everything we got.”

Pennington (9-6, 1 KO) didn’t spend much time questioning the advice she was being given. Instead, she waded in one more time against Nunes (16-4, 11 KOs), who won the title two years ago with a first-round submission of Miesha Tate, then defended it with a 48-second technical knockout of Ronda Rousey and a five-round split decision over Valentina Shevchenko.

About halfway through the fifth round, Nunes won again by technical knockout, after raining blows down on her beleaguered foe. As Pennington lay on the canvas in a pool of her own blood, with her nose appearing broken, many observers, including MMA fighters and analysts, wondered why her corner did not heed her words between rounds and move to protect their fighter.

Even Nunes, who didn’t learn of Pennington’s attempt to stop the fight until after the contest ended, said her corner should have listened. “It’s sad, because you could avoid something,” Nunes said. “She went to the hospital. It might be a bad injury for her to go to the hospital.