Rose Namajunas shocked the world when she defeated Joanna Jedrzejczyk to win the UFC Women’s Strawweight Title at UFC 217.
The former champion took a lot of shots at Namajunas’ mental stability leading into the fight and the new champion says she defeated the former title holder at her own game.
“This was a fight of mental warfare,” Namajunas said on The MMA Hour. “I beat her at her own game. I think each time that I wasn’t giving her nothing, she needs that. She needs somebody to fire back. I just wasn't gonna do it and I just stuck with it. It definitely took a lot of restraint on my end, it took a lot of control. It took a lot out of me to do it. But I knew that’s what I had to do. I knew that’s the way to beat her is to shut her mental game down.”
Jedrzejczyk suffered the first defeat of her professional MMA career on that night and she also lost the opportunity to break Ronda Rousey’s consecutive title defense record.
Namajunas also says that when she earned the victory at UFC 217, it was goodness that prevailed.
“It felt like good prevailed for once,” Namajunas said. “I feel like we’ve been in kind of a dark time these past few years and there’s always gonna be good and bad. We need the villain sometimes. It makes for an interesting story. I think people can relate. They love the Rocky story, they love the underdog. That’s what happened.”
These two fighters may cross paths again sooner than one thinks because the former champion did say she wanted a rematch.
