Jena Bishop: ‘I Love to Make People Suffer’

Jena Bishop wasted no time in making her mark in mixed martial arts after a long and successful career in grappling. Making stops in the Legacy Fighting Alliance and Bellator MMA before joining the Professional Fighters League in 2024, Bishop skyrocketed to the spotlight by starting her career at 7-0, with four submissions in those seven victories. However, her stock rose even further after her first professional loss.

In her second assignment of the PFL regular season, Bishop was on the losing end of a split decision to former Ultimate Fighting Championship title challenger Taila Santos. The performance showed many exactly what she was capable of and proved to Bishop that she can hang with the very best. She still managed to secure one of the four playoff spots in defeat, and Bishop will take on rising star Dakota Ditcheva when their women’s flyweight semifinal serves as the PFL 7 co-headliner on Friday in Nashville, Tennessee. Bishop relishes the opportunity to stay active in the PFL.

“I like being busy,” she told Sherdog.com. “I would’ve liked one more week in between for down time to recover, but would I actually have taken some down time to recover? Probably not. If I didn’t have a fight scheduled, I would’ve been on my management to get me a fight.”

The opportunity provided by the PFL for fighters like Bishop to come in and, in less than one calendar year, become a world champion and be awarded a $1 million grand prize is great, but Bishop wants to prove she belongs at the top.

“It’s really exciting. It’s really cool,” she said. “I’m just more excited—the title and all that stuff has a lot of allure—but I’m just excited to keep having opportunities to prove myself and show what I’m about. It’s more about proving it to me than anything else. I want to know that I thought I could really do this and now it’s like, I was right. I’m doing it. To have those opportunities [for the belt and money] is icing on the cake.”

There was no bigger moment Bishop has had of proving it to herself than her last fight against Santos. Despite losing a split decision, she was able to show to herself that she can compete against the very best opposition. She even had one judge convinced she won.

“For me, I was ‘Ok, I can hang with the best in the world,’” Bishop said. “In my opinion, I’m a fan [of Santos], and in her [Valentina] Shevchenko fight, I was like, ‘She won. They just robbed her of that title. She’s the UFC champion.’ Then I get to fight her early in my career, maybe earlier in the season than it should’ve been, but I got to prove to myself that [it’s] not that scary, and I’m here. I’m coming for it.

“[With] everything I’ve been working for,” she added, “it gave me that confidence that I’m the best in the world and I know I can prove that.”

Knowing most view Ditcheva as a significant favorite, Bishop embraces the role of underdog.

“That’s something that I’m used to dealing with,” she said. “There was a lot of things that were a little bit triggering taking me back to a lot of the nonsense that happened in my jiu-jitsu career. Jiu-jitsu is riddled with favoritism and nonsense. I’m used to that. That’s not a big deal, so whatever narratives, that’s cool, but that puts more pressure on her than it does on me. If they really want to hype this girl up, not to say that she’s not a great fighter, that puts more pressure because there’s a lot to be proven, but I feel like I’ve proven myself.”

In a classic clash of styles, Bishop’s grappling will be the talk in comparison to Ditcheva’s striking. While Bishop welcomes a standup battle, she prefers to stick to what she excels in.

“I think that was in my last fight where I thought, ‘Hey, I think I’m winning these striking exchanges. Maybe we should just stay on the feet. That’s fine.’ But I want to do some grappling,” she said. “I don’t ever want to get away from that. That’s my first love, my biggest strength and I think that I’m just ready to show people I can handle it all. I can win in any way.”

That superior grappling is what Bishop says the world should expect when she looks to punch her ticket to the PFL championship at Ditcheva’s expense in the semifinals.

“They should expect some really high-level grappling, some really good MMA,” she said. “If you’re not a fan of grappling, I understand. A lot of people hate it, they want to boo it, but guess what? I’m here to do it. I love to make people suffer and quit from just the grappling alone. I don’t even have to submit you. I can make you quit before, and that’s something where I think, unless you’ve done it, you don’t understand how satisfying it is. That’s what I plan to do. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”