RIO DE JANEIRO – When Raquel Pennington enters the octagon in Rio de Janeiro to close out Saturday’s UFC 224 pay-per-view event, she’ll be staring not only at a champion in Amanda Nunes – but one who’s a 10-1 favorite to beat her.

Pennington (9-5 MMA, 6-2 UFC) sees the factors that might play into that. There is the fact that, due to multiple injuries, she hasn’t fought in 18 months. There’s the fact that she’s the one venturing into enemy territory, against Brazil’s own Nunes (15-4 MMA, 8-1 UFC), at Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro. There’s the fact that Nunes has already twice defended her belt.

And then there’s Pennington’s feeling that, quite simply, “Everybody is always underestimating me.”

It’s a good thing then that “Rocky” is confident enough in herself that she is not even paying attention to how others, including the odds makers, feel about her chances.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Pennington told MMAjunkie. “I’ve worked hard for this opportunity, I deserve it, and in my opinion, I’m the better fighter walking into this one. Just for me, I feel like she’s the one that has more pressure. She’s fighting in front of her home country and stuff like that. She has a lot more expectation on her. For me, it’s just passion. It’s fun. I’m just going to go out there and be me.”

“Being me” has worked out for Pennington in her past fights. She comes into her first UFC title bout, which will also be her first headliner, riding a four-fight winning streak. The most recent one was her biggest win yet, over former champion Miesha Tate, which stamped her ticket as a challenger for Nunes’ 135-pound belt.

But the fact that that fight took place in November 2016 tells a different part of Pennington’s storyline: Even after earning her shot, her road toward it wasn’t complete. After recovering from surgeries on her shoulder, wrist and mouth, a UFC 219 meeting with Nunes that was all but signed fell through once again, this time due to Pennington injuring her leg in an accident.

Then, after all of that, for a while it looked like Pennington could lose her turn to someone outside the UFC’s 135-pound division, as talks of a super fight between Nunes and 145-pound champion Cris Cyborg got stronger. But ultimately, things still came together so that Pennington had her stab at gold.

One wouldn’t blame Pennington for carrying an added dose of nerves heading into her highest-stakes fight yet. And she’s not saying there won’t be any nerves. But having gone through her fair share of setbacks to make it this far, she takes them in stride.

“I feel really confident about this fight,” Pennington said. “I just feel really confident in my skills and my abilities. I did a lot of soul-searching, I guess you can say, throughout this fight camp. I’ve probably experienced every emotion that you can probably think of. It’s been a long camp, but I kind of went back to my roots, and I thought about everything.

“I started this with a goal and a passion, and this is just one of the goals, and it still goes from here. At the end of the day, the nerves are going to come, but for me, it’s like I always say: When you’re feeling the nerves, it just means your body is ready and you’re excited.”

Here’s the thing, though: We would assume that Nunes’ previous opponents were also confident that they could beat her when they signed on the dotted line of their contracts. Still, in the UFC, only Cat Zingano was successful in her mission.

So what is it that Pennington has that the ones that came before, including Tate and ex-champ Ronda Rousey, didn’t?

“I think that I’m a fighter that brings something that Amanda’s never experienced,” Pennington said. “At the end of the day, Amanda has great striking, but I have better striking. I feel like I bring more of a brawling style, and I can take a punch. So she wants to sit here and give me one punch, and I’ll take one punch to give her three.

“And on top of that, I think that I’m the better wrestler. And then the ground game – a lot of people categorize me as this brawler, but they haven’t seen my well-rounded game. And that’s one thing, I think, that makes me extremely dangerous.”

Pennington won’t give predictions as to how the fight will end – only that, should it go all five rounds, she’ll be ready for them. But, of course, what she wants and has trained for is to get her hand raised by the time it ends. And, with that, to take a shiny new belt home.

Asked what the belt would mean for her, Pennington struggles to even articulate. On the one hand, it’s a big reward, but “Rocky” already feels like a champion just by making it this far. Sure, it’s proof of something, but it’s more of a proof to herself than it is for her loved ones, who have all seen the champion in her already.

Yes, it’s a goal, but it’s not her only goal. Even if, in an attempt to keep herself from getting overwhelmed by her own thoughts, she tries not to put too much thought into the specific ones that would follow it.

“I’m the type of person that I’m so goal-oriented and ambitious that sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’m stressed out because I just don’t know where to being,” Pennington said. “I just have one too many goals. Really, that’s I guess not a problem, but it can be overwhelming. The ultimate goal was just to get my first fight, and then I got my first fight. Then I was like, ‘OK, you know what? I want to do this with my amateur career, and then I want to go pro.’ Then I went pro. And I wanted to get signed with Invicta (FC), and I did that. It’s just like the list never ends. Opportunities just keep presenting themselves, and so I just keep adding more.

“For me, it’s a world title fight. And, for me, I’m chasing a dream and a passion. But, on the same token, throughout my camp my coaches have been like, ‘OK, fifth round, just give it your all. This is for the world title. You’re five minutes away from getting a belt wrapped around you.’ But for me, this is about building a legacy, building a story, something that I can have later in life that I can share with kids, where I am – you know, I’m inspiring people just by being me and having fun. The world title, it’s something for me. It’s something to share. But it’s also a life-changing event not just for me but everybody who surrounds me.”

For more on UFC 224, check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.