‘Thug Rose’ had some choice words for the walkout music chosen for her by the UFC for her Rio title defense.
As far as UFC fight walkout music goes, you can certainly do a lot worse than AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ blaring out of arena speakers in front of 15,000 screaming Brazilian fans. That’s the song that accompanied Rose Namajunas’ walk to the cage for her big UFC 237 title fight against Jessica Andrade.
Interestingly enough, it turns out that Rose wasn’t the one that picked that song. It wasn’t her longterm partner Pat Barry’s choice either, although you’d figure that’s exactly the kind of jam he’d love. It turns out it was UFC president Dana White, purveyor of all things 90s metal and earlier, who made the selection. Namajunas made a tongue in cheek Instagram post regarding the choice after her 2nd round slam KO loss on Saturday night.
”That’s the last time I let @danawhite pick my walk out song,” Rose wrote with a emoticon. “Thank you Brazil I will never forget this experience.”
Just to make it 100% clear that Namajunas wasn’t blaming White for anything, her manager Brian Butler from Suckerpunch Entertainment added a bit of extra context to the post.
”So there were technical difficulties for Rose Namajunas’ walk out songs her past 2 fights so when the UFC asked what she wanted this time she said she didn’t care and to have Dana White pick the song…” Butler wrote. “Well played Thug Rose! She is in good spirits.”
As for those technical difficulties, they started at UFC 217 for Rose’s first fight against Joanna Jedrzejczyk when the UFC accidentally played Mark Godbeer’s walkout song ‘Supersonic’ by Oasis again instead of whatever she wanted. We’re not sure what went wrong at UFC 223 for her rematch with Jedrzejczyk … maybe they played the wrong remix of ‘Sleepy Language’ by Layo & Bushwacka?
At least Namajunas didn’t have an imposter picking ridiculous song choices for her. But we can understand the frustration of asking for a certain song and then having to walk out to the wrong goddamn track. Certain athletes can’t get their s**t together without going through a precise pre-game ritual. That seems a bit extreme, but it’s much more understandable that Namajunas would rather just cede responsibility for song choice rather than pick a deeply emotional cut and then have the booty remix play her to the cage.