Matt Pena was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa. Following the footsteps of all the boys in the Pena family, he stepped in the gym and began fighting at the age of six. His grandfather, Golden Gloves Hall of Famer, Alvino Pena trained many great fighters such as Clint Jackson, Lamont Lovelady, Michael Nunn, Antwun Echols and Pat Miletich. Along with countless other national champions, including Matt's Uncles Pat and Mike, they developed a discipline that put Iowa boxing on the map.

Matt enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at the age of seventeen. But unfortunately, it was there that he also suffered the first of multiple hand injuries that would eventually shorten his fight career. At 21 years old Matt decided to follow in his grandfather, Alvino Pena's, huge footsteps and began to share his years of boxing knowledge as a coach, working with Marines during their off-time.

In 1994, Matt returned from the Marines to Davenport, Iowa. The Davenport Boxing Club, a non-profit gym for inner-city kids, was losing funding and his grandfather was getting older. When the team's performance began to decline, Matt stepped up by taking on fundraising responsibilities to ensure that his grandfather's gym stay open and the gym legacy would continue. With the finances in order, Matt had the opportunity to be in the gym more often, thus helping his grandfather coach and reestablish the Davenport Boxing Club to its state of power. The very first kid that Matt Pena worked with, went along to win a national championship twice. It wasn't long before their gym was bringing home titles and competing on a national level again.

Soon after, members from Miletich Fighting Systems began to make trips down to the Pena's gym in order to improve their striking skills. After ten years of training fighters, Matt Pena assumed the position of boxing coach at Miletich Fighting Systems in 2004. The first to work with Pena were Mike Whitehead and Spencer Fisher with great results. This caught the attention of the greatest UFC champion of all time, Matt Hughes. Pena began training Hughes in preparation to regain his title against Frank Trigg, which Hughes successfully did in April, 2005. There after, Pena began to train Tim Sylvia for his comeback road in his preparations to regain the UFC Heavyweight championship. Eleven months later, Sylvia regained his title with a shocking knockout victory over Andrei Arlovski. Pena began to train all UFC fighters at MFS during that time.

In January of 2007, Matt Pena had the opportunity to work with some of the best up and coming lightweights in MMA, as a boxing coach for Team Pulver on Spike TV's hit TV series, The Ultimate Fighter 5. As follow up to his successful run as boxing coach on TUF 5, Matt was invited back for The Ultimate Fighter 6, becoming the first and only boxing coach to work on two consecutive seasons of the show. Even more impressively, during both seasons all finalist from the competition came from Coach Pena's team.

While "The Ultimate Fighter 6", Pena, Matt Hughes, Robbie Lawler and Marc Fiore decided open their own gym and start a new team - H.I.T. Squad (Hughes Intensive Training). Here they will continue to develop the next generation of MMA fighters.