Rose Namajunas continues to be excited to compete in the principle occasion of UFC Denver, however there’s part of her that needs she had her unique opponent.
The previous UFC strawweight champion faces Tracy Cortez within the flyweight headliner this Saturday at Ball Area. Namajunas was initially slated to face rising contender Maycee Barber earlier than Barber was pressured to withdraw from the bout.
Namajunas has seen how Barber has acted on social media, and her strategies of callouts just lately — even utilizing a few of Namajunas’ teammates as potential bait — which is why the aggressive hearth in Namajunas was a little bit extra stoked to face Barber.
“It’s simply been a number of interactions that I’ve had together with her, or on social media a very long time in the past, identical to foolish stuff,” Namajunas stated Wednesday on The MMA Hour. “She posted an image of me with my coaching companions and X’d out all of their faces after which circled my face and was like, ‘I’m coming for you subsequent.’ I’m identical to, ‘OK.’
“She all the time tries to say that by beating my coaching companions, [she thinks], ‘I do know that broke her.’ You don’t know what may break me, as a result of there’s much more that has to interrupt me. I don’t have something private in opposition to her, however the competitor inside me, it’s like, yeah, I actually needed to point out her what’s up.”
After shedding the 115-pound title to Carla Esparza at UFC 274 in Could 2022, Namajunas moved as much as flyweight and is 1-1 in her new weight class. In her divisional debut, Namajunas dropped a call to Manon Fiorot at UFC Paris this previous September earlier than bouncing again with a foremost occasion determination win over Amanda Ribas in March at UFC Vegas 89.
Seeking to climb the ranks of a second division, she was capable of digest the information of Barber’s departure and Cortez’s entry fairly rapidly.
“Positively, combating Maycee was tremendous thrilling on the time,” Namajunas stated. “I used to be a little bit upset to search out out the information, however now that it’s Tracy, it’s simply completely different. I’m simply as excited.
“I went via that means of being like, ‘Oh, man,’ after which as quickly as they had been engaged on Tracy, it took me a second, however as soon as I made that transition, it took me a day to course of it, and it was like, ‘Alright, that is what we’re doing.’”
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