The UFC women’s strawweight division has seen some amazing fights in the past few years. There was the title fight between Weili Zhang and Joanna Jedrzejczyk in March 2020. However, Zhang never fought after that and is now defending her title against Rose Namajunas in the co-main event of UFC 261 on April 24.

However, she has had a rough ride to the top. She was the strawweight champion in 2017 after she beat Jedrzejczyk. Unfortunately, after she defended her title against Joanna for the second time, she lost it to Jessica Andrade in 2019. Andrade lost it to Weili and immediately lost her next fight against Namajunas.

So there we are. This is why Namajunas and Weili are fighting right now, and the rest of the division will be watching with much interest. She spoke to Ariel Helwani for ESPN MMA and addressed the controversy around her and the UFC president, Dana White.

White had said that Rose didn’t want to fight for the title, and Helwani asked her if that was accurate. “I mean, of course, it’s not accurate. There’s always two sides to every story,” she replied.

Rose Namajunas says that she is very motivated to fight Zhang Weili

She said that contrary to Dana White’s statements; she was motivated to fight Weili. “I have been thinking about fighting Weili ever since I lost the belt and she became the champion. Ever since she beat Joanna, this is something that further increased my motivation to want to fight her,” she proclaimed.

The fact that Weili beat Joanna Jedrzejczyk was a big sign for Namajunas. She believes that only she and Valentina Shevchenko can beat Joanna.

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“We all know Dana says things in the media and then turns out to be not true. That was just one of those scenarios. We still haven’t talked about it since, but here we are,” she concluded with a smirk.

It will be interesting to see how this fight works out as both Namajunas and Zhang are elite strikers. However, Rose is more of a submission specialist, and Zhang has never lost a fight via submission or knockout.

Do you think Rose Namajunas can beat Weili Zhang?

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