UFC strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk has been known to try to intimidate and taunt her opponents leading up to fights, and it seems that was the case when she went head-to-head with Rose Namajunas for a photo-op staredown recently.
“I think she started out by saying like ‘mentally unstable’ and she said something else that … once she said that, I think I just like blanked out,” Namajunas recalled on The MMA Hour this week. “I don’t remember what she said in the middle. And then I think towards the end, as she started walking away, she said, ‘I’m gonna f*ck you up’ or something like that. I don’t know, kissed her hand. But I couldn’t make out everything, but I was kind of like in this weird trance state where I was getting a few words here and there.”
If it was getting to Namajunas at the time then you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the video footage as she looked completely unnmoved at the time, and reflecting on her rival’s comments, it seems that ‘Thug Rose’ doesn’t entirely disagree with the Polish star’s cruel jibe about her mental health.
“Joanna can say I’m mentally unstable and this and that — and she might be right,” Namajunas said. “I have a history of it in my family. I think that’s what makes me so great of a fighter. I’m crazy as hell. And fighting helps me with that.
“I think if more people would hit a bag and more people would train martial arts the right away, I think there would be less tragedies in the world and less f*cked up things that would happen.”
It remains to be seen whether that will be a help or a hinderance for Namajunas when she goes up against Jedrezjczky, but we won’t have to wait long to find out as the fight is set to go down a week on Saturday at UFC 217 in New York City.
