'The Ultimate Fighter': Meet contestant Jessica Penne
When Jessica Penne signed up to participate in the new season of The Ultimate Fighter, she was joining the show with one purpose and that was to win the inaugural UFC women's strawweight title.
The flipside of doing the reality show is the fact that cameras would be in her face for nearly 24 hours a day, six days a week for over a month while she lived and trained with the same people she would later be fighting. Now for the pedestrian viewer, it's easy to point at this situation and say 'that's what the Ultimate Fighter' has always been about.
But for Penne, who has been demure and reclusive for most of her life, sitting front and center under the spotlight was a far cry from what she would normally choose to do. Actually when she was growing up, it was only through sports that Penne learned to step out from the shadows and do the kinds of things that would eventually gain her a ton of attention.
"Growing up I was always active in sports but I was always an introverted person. I had a hard time relating to people outside of sports so sports was always kind of my comfort zone and I always excelled in them," Penne told FOX Sports.
"Getting into fighting and competing has definitely brought me out of my shell and help me to develop as a person and deal with a lot of the issues I dealt with growing up."
It's a common misconception that being an introvert just means being shy. In reality, a child, teenager or adult who exhibit introverted behavior typically just prefer to be alone and don't thrive when other people are around. Penne fits perfectly into that category, but thanks to her athletic upbringing she was able to learn how to depend on other people and become part of a team.
But as high school came to an end, Penne's options for a future in athletics were few and far between. It was only through denial when she asked to try out a new activity that Penne eventually found the sport that would drive her to become the fighter she is today.
"When I was out of high school and I didn't want to pursue sports out of high school, I was on the softball team and the swim team and I wanted to be on the wrestling team but they told me girls weren't allowed to wrestle. So after high school I found another avenue with jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai and I just fell in love with it. I really do feel like the sport has saved my life and helped me develop into the person that I am," Penne said.
"Before that I really had no direction, I didn't respect others, I didn't respect myself. I just had no motivation or drive for anything."
It may sound corny to proclaim that fighting saved her life, but before she discovered her passion for MMA, Penne was a listless and directionless teenager on a road going nowhere fast.
Training and falling in love with fighting were the two things that made Penne happy on a daily basis and so she did them even more. With each passing day, week, month and year, Penne got better and better and she eventually became the best fighter in the world at 105-pounds just don't tell her that. See, Penne is also her own worst critic.
If you compliment her most recent performance, she'll cordially say 'thank you' and then add a few more sentences of the things she knows she didn't do correctly that could cost her next time. Penne is never satisfied and while that may sound like a detriment to some, she sees it as one of her greatest attributes.
"Being the hypercritical person that I am, that's why I am the way I am and why I'm successful in this sport honestly. I want to be the best. I want to do the best at everything I do and I think that's why I've been successful," Penne said.
"I think the people that are unsuccessful in life and in this sport can't look at themselves and be honest with themselves about what they need to work on and what they need to improve on. I sometimes do that a little too much and I'm really hard on myself, but I know what I'm capable of and I want to show that."
If there was one time where Penne was positive she'd earned some recognition was when the cast selection began for The Ultimate Fighter this season. She currently holds an 11-2 record with wins over two of her castmates on the show this year, but despite those accolades she was forced to go through the tryout process and hope she made the final list.
Obviously she made the cut, but the experience left Penne with a little bit of a chip on her shoulder. But just like the coach that told her she couldn't join the wrestling team because she was a girl, Penne sees this as just another hurdle and an opportunity to prove the naysayers wrong.
"Leading up to the tryouts, I was little bit frustrated honestly that I had to try out. I felt like put my time into this sport and I felt like I should have been asked," Penne said. "It really doesn't matter how I got there, I got there and I was in it."
