![]() Namajunas grew up in inner-city Milwaukee, the second child of Lithuanian immigrants who’d arrived in America’s Dairyland shortly before she was born. Martial arts, she says now, was like Baskin Robbins, and she was happy to try at least a little bit of every flavour. She also wrestled in high school, and tried a handful of other disciplines over the years. But she put in real work, too, earning her black belt at nine. She’d arrive for lessons in the headspace kids can occupy that erases the line between imagination and reality, still half inside the cartoon and ready to go Super Saiyan at any moment. After school, she would head to her step-grandma’s house with enough time to watch Dragon Ball Z before being picked up and taken to the dojang. Rose Namajunas’s stepfather put her into taekwondo when she was about five years old, “and, uhh, don’t remember much,” she admits now, laughing. That’s the challenge now, is getting ready for things to be going smoothly.” “And it’s up to me to stay there - for however long I want to. ![]() “Now, I’m at the top of the mountain,” she says. Now, with a return to New York and a rematch against Jedrzejczyk scheduled for UFC 223 on April 7, she has to add one more skill to her arsenal: playing with the lead. Rose Namajunas is, as her fiancé and coach Pat Barry describes her, “2018 MMA” - a living, breathing, punching, kicking, strangling and submitting embodiment of the cutting edge of her profession. ![]() The speech was a breath of fresh air, delivered by a fighter with the potential to be one of the most important on the UFC roster for years to come. In a sport in which public personas are often marinated in a blend of posturing, cockiness, aggression and trash talk, Namajunas’s message was caring, grounded and genuine. I mean, I know we fight, but this is entertainment. But let’s just give each other hugs and be nice, man. “I just want to try and use my gift of martial arts to try and make this world a better place - change the world,” she said, her voice high and shaking, the belt draped over her right shoulder. By the end of her post-fight interview, she’d won over your in-laws. If you’d only recently married into the Jedrzejczyk family, at this point in the night you were a Rose Namajunas fan. The tap that came seconds later was just a formality. Joanna Champion’s legs buckled on impact she hit the ground looking like someone who’d been dropped off a building. She gathered herself for a beat and then, just when it seemed like she’d settled in place, lunged forward, delivering her left fist on an uninterrupted path to the side of Jedrzejczyk’s jaw. With the clock ticking toward the two-minute mark in the first round, Namajunas stepped out of range of a long, snapping jab. When she ended the fight a minute after that, it only took one. When she dropped Jedrzejczyk two minutes in, she did it with two punches - a flashing left that drove the champ back on her heels, and then a right over the top that put her on her back. She moved to a boxer’s internal music the rhythm of bob and weave familiar but unpredictable, dotted with staccato feints. She opened hostilities with a quick combination Jedrzejczyk danced backward out of reach of both punches. Namajunas kept her gloves high, her left hand testing the space between their bodies. They circled left, changing direction in short bursts like a scratched record. Referee John McCarthy gave the signal, and both women advanced to the centre of the canvas. Jedrzejczyk’s win was supposed to be a foregone conclusion. 4, 2017, as a 4-to-1 underdog in the Vegas books. 4-ranked contender in the 115-pound division, entering the cage in front of a capacity crowd at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Nov. In the blue corner, ‘Thug’ Rose Namajunas, 25-year-old up-and-comer, No. ![]() Remember the major pre-fight bullet points: In the red corner, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, undefeated UFC strawweight champion, top-ranked pound-for-pound fighter on earth, one of the greatest strikers who’s ever lived, chasing a sixth-consecutive title defence to equal Ronda Rousey’s all-time UFC record.
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