Joanna Jedrzejczyk Makes Bold Promise For Next Year
Former UFC women’s strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk is staying positive after being finished by Rose Namajunas at UFC 217 on Saturday, November 4th in New York at Madison Square Garden.
The finish of the bout saw Jedrzejczyk being swarmed by a barrage of strikes at 3:03 of the first round. As a result of this loss, she lost her title.
Now, the Polish fighter is promising the MMA community that she will be champion again next year.
“In May, I will be champion again,” Jedrzejczyk said on a recent edition of The MMA Hour, per MMA Fighting’s Peter Carroll. “Mark my words. May, I’m coming back. It doesn’t matter if Rose is going to hold the belt or not — I will be back in May and mark my words.”
Although she lost the fight, the former UFC champion is still oozing with confidence. In her mind, she is still the rightful champion.
Going into this fight, Jedrzejczyk was attempting to tie former women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey’s UFC record six consecutive title defenses for a female champion.
By looking back at the early betting odds, Jedrzejczyk entered UFC 217 as a sizable 6-1 betting favorite.
“I’m the greatest, and for myself, I’m still the champion,” she said. “This is just another part in the movie. She can take the belt, but I am still the champion, you know? I’m coming back. I’m coming back really soon. I’m not going to cry, I want to talk to people about that. There is something about me, there is something in my body, and nobody have it.”
Jedrzejczyk believes she is deserving of a rematch with the newly crowned champion due to her accomplishments in the sport. She also pointed out that UFC President Dana White hugged her and offered some words of encouragement after the fight.
“I believe, for what I have done for Dana and the UFC, I deserve the rematch. I will see. I saw Dana on the way back from the press conference,” Jedrzejczyk said. He hugged me, I wanted to leave him, but he was like, ‘Please, stop, I love you so much, we love you and nothing change. We love you even more for this, and your comeback is going to be bigger than all of this.’”
“For myself, I turned the page, and I felt like, ‘your comeback is going to be bigger than all of these records and bigger than this.’”
