Joanna Has No Fear Heading Into UFC 223
Joanna Jedrzejczyk looks to bounce back from her UFC 217 loss and reclaim what she believes is “her” title, when she faces Rose Namajunas at UFC 223.
Namajunas pulled off an upset first round victory in 2017, halting Jedrzejczyk’s reign. Joanna “Champion” reflected on the loss on The MMA Hour and feels that losing helped her gain more perspective on her life.
“I have a new challenge and I’m very happy,” Jedrzejczyk said to Ariel Helwani.
“There is no pressure on me. I’m never nervous about fight week, big fights, because the hard work is done so many weeks, days before the fight. I’m enjoying this, and I look at things differently. I used to say that I want to be undefeated, I wanted to retire undefeated. I don’t care about this anymore. I saw that I love my life more, and fighting is just part of my life. People wanted me to, like, be sad, cry, and hide after I lost. No.
“Guys, you have a job, I have a job to do. It’s part of my life. Soon I will stop fighting and I will do something else. I will be a mother, I will have some businesses, I will do some other stuff, and it’s just part of my life. I’m 100 percent in, but let’s not get crazy. That I lost, it’s not the end of the world. For other people it could be, but not for me.”
Before losing at UFC 217, not only did Jedrzejczyk claim that she would retire undefeated, but also claimed that the prospect of losing was a major fear.
“It’s real, and I was afraid of that,” Jedrzejczyk admitted. “And I didn’t know enough, but now I feel like, just deal with it, and I’m not afraid of losing. It’s not going to happen, but I’m not afraid of losing. I want people to see me as a human, that I was not only born for being at the top. I was born for that, but not only for this — I’m real, you can touch me. I’m real, I’m not created. [Dominick Cruz is a] perfect example [of how to deal with a loss].
“I want to dedicate this fight to people who have failed, and they don’t have the strength to rise,” Jedrzejczyk added. “I want to show to them that even if you fell from the highest [stage], you can rise, you can be back. Take you life in your hands, man. Go through every day and rise. It’s life. It’s life, that’s the thing.”
Unlike the lead-up to their UFC 217 fight, both fighters seem to have shown more respect towards one another. At a recent phone conference hyping up the April 7th event, Namajunas refuse to criticize Jedrzejczyk’s claims that a poor weight cut was the reason she walked out without her title at UFC 217.
“I have even more respect for Rose than I had after the last press conference on the phone last week,” Jedrzejczyk said. “Someone asked her if she believes me that it was the weight cut, she said yes. Thank you for that, for understanding. We all are fighters. And they are weak, the people who are [criticizing] this — they are weak, because I didn’t give up. I took my job and I did my job. I was on weight on the day of the weigh-ins. I took this fight, even [when people were saying] I should go to the hospital, take an IV, or maybe even not fight. But I wanted to do this, for the people who came to the show and who purchased the pay-per-view.”
Original Story: MMA Fighting