UFC Champ Julianna Peña on COVID-19 pandemic: “This is just a money grab”

Newly crowned UFC women’s bantamweight champion Julianna Peña appeared as a guest on Joe Rogan‘s podcast and gave her opinion on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rogan’s highly popular podcast on Spotify has drawn national headlines recently for content that expressed controversial opinions on COVID-19 treatments. One episode in particular impacted Peña’s opinion on the pandemic.

A recent podcast featured an interview with Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who was involved in early mRNA technology research. Malone had been banned from Twitter for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. The interview was taken down by YouTube.

“I listened to the podcast with the two doctors, like back to back, Dr. Malone and Peter McCullough. That was eye opening for me,” Pena said.

The episodes featuring Dr. Malone and McCullough were shared on social media by the millions and sparked strong reactions. 270 doctors, scientists, professors and healthcare workers penned an open letter to Spotify asking the platform to adopt an a policy against “misinformation.”

Legendary musician Neil Young issued an ultimatum to Spotify telling the platform to remove his his music or pull Rogan’s podcast. Spotify chose to remove Young’s music.

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“I’m a massive conspiracy theorist on this whole thing and I have been since the very beginning,” Peña said. “I’m like, this is just a money grab. This is they’re trying to kill us, you know? And this is ridiculous.”

Rogan pushed back against Peña’s comments.

“I don’t think they’re trying to kill us. I think there’s a lot of confusion as fas as what works and what doesn’t work,” Rogan replied.