mma / News

Rose Namajunas Looking Forward to Long Fight at UFC 201

July 27, 2016 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas

Rosa Namajunas spoke with MMAjunkie about her fight with Karolina Kowalkiewicz at UFC 201. Some highlights are below:

On training to be ready for a title shot: “My attitude is training every day with the mindset of being a champion and eventually I’ll get there. I don’t think about doing something for a certain result. Whether (the title shot) comes tomorrow or a year from now, it doesn’t matter. very day I’m getting ready for it. I feel ready for anything at this moment. I’m ready to fight, it doesn’t matter who it is. I’m just ready for a fight, and you can’t really think much else of that. It doesn’t matter who the person is. You just have to be the best version of yourself and everything will take care of itself. Whatever happens, you learn from it – but I feel like I’m ready. Doesn’t matter whether it’s (Jedrzejczyk) or whether it’s freaking Godzilla.”

On coming out with a buzzcut against Paige VanZant: “I knew that is was going to be a shock for a lot of people. For some reason, being a woman, you just need to have hair. I don’t understand why it matters so much to people. At the same time, you get it, because it’s what everybody’s supposed to think. Everybody is used to a certain thing, so when it’s different, people just freak out. I’m constantly changing it up. I’m constantly doing something different that people don’t expect. I fight – that’s something that’s different in general. I like surprising people. I like shocking people. At the same time, I just wanted to cut off my hair, too. People talking about it is fine. I’m not surprised they were talking about it, but at the same time I think it is kind of silly.”

On her fight with Kowalkiewicz: “I think that there are going to be opportunities for me to finish the fight at many different moments. Or it could happen very quickly. At the same time, I’m also looking forward to a long fight. I kind of want to break her down. I want to get that dominant, satisfactory win, versus just catching somebody. I’m OK with just catching her, I think it’s very possible it could happen. But I also want to just dominate. I want to shut her down with my strategies and decisive approach toward very systematically just breaking her down.”