“If she ever wants to fight again for the belt, I know she’s figuring some stuff out, but if she wants to do it I’ll be happy to go to Denver and defend in her hometown the same way she did to me.”
Newly-crowned UFC women’s strawweight champion Jessica Andrade has a tremendous amount of respect for Rose Namajunas. So much so that she is willing to offer ‘Thug’ Rose an immediate rematch.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani in a recent interview Andrade, who KO’d Namajunas to win the strawweight title at UFC 237, said she would love to fight the former 125-pound queen on foreign soil in Denver, Colorado.
“The person that I would really like to fight again would definitely be Rose,” Andrade said (transcription via BJPenn.com). “Because she did a very nice act of kindness to me by going to Rio to defend her belt — she had no obligation to do that. And if she ever wants to fight again for the belt, I know she’s figuring some stuff out, but if she wants to do it I’ll be happy to go to Denver and defend in her hometown the same way she did to me.”
With that said, Andrade is open to defending her newly-acquired strawweight title against Nina Ansaroff or Tatiana Suarez should Namajunas decide to retire.
“If Rose doesn’t want to do it, probably the winner of Nina [Ansaroff] and Tatiana [Suarez] would be the most worthy of the next title fight,” she added. “But, in the UFC you never know so I’m just training and getting ready because I know that there’s a lot of tough girls coming up very soon.”
Andrade finished Namajunas with a highlight reel KO (slam) in the second round of their headlining championship clash at UFC 237, cementing herself as one of the most powerful women in the division and earning a spot in the UFC’s official top-ten pound-for-pound rankings.