Raquel Pennington Ethnicity, Nationality, and More: All About the UFC Women’s Champion

The world will be watching this weekend when Raquel Pennington puts her title up for grabs for the first time in her UFC career. Taking on former champion Julianna Pena, UFC 307 certainly won’t be an easy outing for ‘Rocky.’ However, she has made it to the top of the women’s division anyway, and as far as MMA goes, anything can happen in a fight in the blink of an eye.

At 36 years old, Raquel Pennington, in early 2024, completed 11 years of her association with Dana White‘s promotion. But given that she’s just recently risen to prominence after becoming a champion, fans know very little about the Colorado native. But we got that covered, so let’s dive into it!

Where is Raquel Pennington from? Ethnicity and Nationality

Raquel Pennington started training in mixed martial arts back when she was 19 years old. From then to today, she has clearly come a long way. Having admitted to having spent her summers in Florida, the fighter was actually born in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Pennington is half-Caucasian and half-Mexican and an American by nationality. Standing at 5 feet 7 inches in height, the fighter is married to UFC strawweight fighter Tecia Torres. While she grew up playing sports like volleyball, softball, and basketball, her interests took her to boxing, and eventually, to mixed martial arts.

Her parents didn’t support her bid to pursue the sport initially, but she persevered towards it, anyway. In 2007, she graduated from Harrison High School with many athletic and academic scholarships to her name.

Interestingly, she shares her moniker with none other than the men’s welterweight champion of the UFC, Leon Edwards. Both of them are called ‘Rocky’ thanks to their dynamic and explosive boxing skills. Raquel took to Instagram on the 24th of December to detail some facts about herself where she admitted to being deathly scared of alligators and sharks. Now let’s move over to another aspect of her life and take a look at her parents and the relationship she shares with them.

All we know about Raquel Pennington’s early life and parents

We hardly have any concrete details about the identity of Raquel Pennington’s parents. However, she did reveal her mother’s name, Rose, during an interview with the UFC. Like most parents, her parents didn’t seem too enthusiastic about her wish to become an MMA fighter. Pennington was even banned from boxing by her parents. But she pursued what she had dreamt of since she was 19 years old and became one of the female bantamweight ever in the UFC.

Raquel Pennington’s mother, in her own words, has been her biggest cheerleader. “My mom has been there for every single fight. She missed one fight during COVID and she was devastated. She’s been there through all my athletics. She was at every single basketball game, every volleyball game, every softball game. When I was running cross country and track, she was always there,” Pennington told the UFC. Her father, on the other hand, has also shown his support for the bantamweight champion, evident from Raquel Pennington’s multiple social media posts with the patriarch of her family.

The women’s bantamweight champion will surely have parents watching her first title defense since it’s, on paper, her biggest fight ever. Can she overcome Julianna Pena at UFC 307? Give us your thoughts in the comments below.