Weili Zhang has issued her first public response to Rose Namajunas’ controversial comments about communism’s role in the UFC 261 strawweight title fight. Recently, former strawweight champion “Thug” Rose Namajunas made headlines for her com…
Weili Zhang has issued her first public response to Rose Namajunas’ controversial comments about communism’s role in the UFC 261 strawweight title fight. Recently, former strawweight champion “Thug” Rose Namajunas made headlines for her comments regarding her upcoming bout against current champ Weili Zhang. Namajunas expressed that her fight against Zhang is bigger than just […]
Joanna J?drzejczyk has demanded that she face the winner of the Weili Zhang vs. Rose Namajunas bout, and she could care less about your opinion on the matter. Former UFC strawweight champion Joanna J?drzejczyk has become quite familiar with title fight…
Joanna J?drzejczyk has demanded that she face the winner of the Weili Zhang vs. Rose Namajunas bout, and she could care less about your opinion on the matter. Former UFC strawweight champion Joanna J?drzejczyk has become quite familiar with title fights during her illustrious career in this sport. In fact, since 2015, only two of […]
Joanna Jedrzejczyk wants her belt back. The former UFC strawweight queen has been busy outside of the octagon since her fight of the year performance against Zhang Weili last year. Spending most of the pandemic in her native Poland, Jedrzejczyk has spent the time pursuing other business opportunities. She’s served as a judge on a […]
The former UFC strawweight queen has been busy outside of the octagon since her fight of the year performance against Zhang Weili last year. Spending most of the pandemic in her native Poland, Jedrzejczyk has spent the time pursuing other business opportunities. She’s served as a judge on a Polish dance competition show and is writing her autobiography. Still, her desire to regain what’s she lost is strong. In a recent interview with MMA Fighting, Joanna opens up about what’s she has been up to and what she wants next.
“I’m living my best life,” she shared. “With my personal or business problems, we all have it, and I’m very happy. I take everything that’s happening in my life, and I give a lot. I give 100 percent every single day in everything I do, but I did as much as I can. I’m still an athlete because I really want to do it, but I set my priorities. I have different priorities. I don’t want to be part of this crazy rat race because I was there.”
These new endeavors outside of the octagon have not swayed the former champ away from her unfinished business within it. She asked the UFC for the rematch with whoever comes out of UFC 261. “I want to get the winner of this fight,” said Jedrzejczyk.
“I won’t stop. That’s the thing if I was losing fights by knockout or if I was losing the fights on points and the difference was big but it’s not. I always put on a show and the fights are very close so I want to keep on going.”
“I called Mick [Maynard] a few days ago and I just told him ‘You know what? The baddest b*tch on the planet is back’ so book the fight, watch this fight and tell everybody that I’m next,” Jedrzejczyk said.
“I was waiting for this fight. It’s COVID time, so that’s the only reason why the belt was not stripped. Because once a year you have to defend the belt. But we’re having COVID times but when I was the champ, I was defending this belt like crazy.”
Jedrzejczyk knows that some think it’s inappropriate for her to get the next title shot. She lost her last attempt at regaining the belt in her Fight of the Year performance. But she believes that she has done enough to book the fight.
“I know there are so many people who are like ‘you lost, you have to prove it again.’ I proved it in my last fight, putting on f*cking hell of a show,” Jedrzejczyk said. “Giving the closest fight ever. That’s the thing, Fight of the Year, no gender, no weights. It’s the ticket for the next title fight. That’s the thing. I just don’t want to fight for nothing anymore. That’s the thing.
“If I fight, I fight for big trophies and I don’t have to prove it to anybody.”
Jedrzejczyk remains confident that she will win the rematch with either Namajunas or Weili, but didn’t go as far as to predict the winner of the title fight at UFC 261.
“I wish best of luck to both of them and I hope they will bring the strawweight division even higher than I did the last time with Weili Zhang,” she said. “But I feel like every time I step into the octagon, I break another barrier and limits and records. I did that many times with winning the belt, defending the belt and now with putting on such great shows.”
Do you think Joanna Jedrzejczyk deserves the next strawweight title shot?
Weili Zhang is not bothered about the recent comments of Rose Namajunas. Namajunas created a stir recently when she detailed her motivation for her upcoming women’s strawweight title fight with Zhang at UFC 261 on April 24. “I was just kind of reminding myself of my background and everywhere that I come from and my […]
Weili Zhang is not bothered about the recent comments of Rose Namajunas.
“I was just kind of reminding myself of my background and everywhere that I come from and my family and everything like that, and I kind of wanted to educate my training partner [on] the Lithuanian struggle and just the history of it all, so we watched ‘The Other Dream Team’ just to kind of get an overall sentiment of what we fight for. Just after watching that, it was just a huge reminder of like, yeah, it’s better dead than red, you know? I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Weili is red. That’s what she represents. It’s nothing personal against her, but that’s a huge motivating factor of why I fight, and I fight for freedom.
“I’ve got the Christ consciousness, I’ve got Lithuanian blood, and I’ve got the American dream. And all of those things I’m taking with me into the fight.”
The implication, of course, being that Zhang was a supporter of communism since she hails from China even though she hasn’t publicly shown her support.
Namajunas would since double down on her comments stating that she doesn’t regret making them. So what does Zhang make of what she’s had to say?
Not very much according to strength and conditioning coach Ruben Payan Jr.
“Let me tell you the truth, and we’ll make a statement next week cuz the media will be asking,” he said in a recent interview. “To be honest with you we haven’t been paying attention. It’s been like watching it but not feeling it. This is the soap opera that’s happening but we aren’t really engaging in it because we’re just so focused on the fight. It hasn’t even been a topic for the team. I wish there was something more that I could say, but it’s like … non-emotional. There’s really nothing to say if you’re not really emotionally attached to it.
“You’re just kind of watching things happen and you’re watching people talk about it,” he continued. “And you see people get upset about it. And you see the comments but you’re not involved in it. That’s kind of how it feels. Even though some of the comments are directed towards her, there’s so many non-truths to it that it’s like we’re not even going to pay attention to it. That’s kind of how we feel.”
It will be interesting to see what Zhang says when she’s asked about it directly during fight week.
Rose Namajunas is doubling down on her anti-communist rhetoric but is emphasizing that they were not targeted directly at UFC 261 opponent Weili Zhang. Over the weekend, some of Rose Namajunas’ comments made during an interview with Lithuanian National…
Rose Namajunas is doubling down on her anti-communist rhetoric but is emphasizing that they were not targeted directly at UFC 261 opponent Weili Zhang. Over the weekend, some of Rose Namajunas’ comments made during an interview with Lithuanian National Radio and Television made headlines. The former strawweight champion described her upcoming bout against Weili Zhang […]
Things have taken a political turn in the Weili Zhang vs. Rose Namajunas fight. The pair will collide for the women’s strawweight title as one of three championship fights taking place at the upcoming UFC 261 pay-per-view event on April 24 in Jacksonville, Florida. And while most would have expected a cordial buildup given the […]
Things have taken a political turn in the Weili Zhang vs. Rose Namajunas fight.
The pair will collide for the women’s strawweight title as one of three championship fights taking place at the upcoming UFC 261 pay-per-view event on April 24 in Jacksonville, Florida.
And while most would have expected a cordial buildup given the personalities and respect between the two fighters, Namajunas has injected some politics into the equation as she is using Zhang’s home country of China — being a communist country — as a source of motivation for their upcoming fight.
“You know, the animosity and things like that, those can be very motivating factors in short moments,” Namajunas said (via @FullContactMTWF). “But in all actuality, going into the fight, maybe there was certain rivalries and things like that, but I always kept myself in control. I never really hated the person and I don’t hate Weili or anything like that. There’s nothing, but I do feel as though I have a lot to fight for in this fight and what she represents.
“I was just kind of reminding myself of my background and everywhere that I come from and my family and everything like that, and I kind of wanted to educate my training partner [on] the Lithuanian struggle and just the history of it all, so we watched ‘The Other Dream Team’ just to kind of get an overall sentiment of what we fight for. Just after watching that, it was just a huge reminder of like, yeah, it’s better dead than red, you know? I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Weili is red. That’s what she represents. It’s nothing personal against her, but that’s a huge motivating factor of why I fight, and I fight for freedom.
“I’ve got the Christ consciousness, I’ve got Lithuanian blood, and I’ve got the American dream. And all of those things I’m taking with me into the fight.”
Namajunas, of course, is Lithuanian-American with her parents being Lithuanian immigrants who left the communist rule of the Soviet Union. That makes her comments understandable but still unnecessary at the same time, especially as Zhang has never publicly advocated for communism.
It will definitely be interesting to hear how Zhang responds to these comments even if they weren’t made with any ill intentions from Namajunas.
Joanna Jedrzejczyk wants her belt back. The former UFC strawweight queen has been busy outside of the octagon since her fight of the year performance against Zhang Weili last year. Spending most of the pandemic in her native Poland, Jedrzejczyk has spent the time pursuing other business opportunities. She’s served as a judge on a […]
Weili Zhang is not bothered about the recent comments of Rose Namajunas. Namajunas created a stir recently when she detailed her motivation for her upcoming women’s strawweight title fight with Zhang at UFC 261 on April 24. “I was just kind of reminding myself of my background and everywhere that I come from and my […]
Things have taken a political turn in the Weili Zhang vs. Rose Namajunas fight. The pair will collide for the women’s strawweight title as one of three championship fights taking place at the upcoming UFC 261 pay-per-view event on April 24 in Jacksonville, Florida. And while most would have expected a cordial buildup given the […]