Former women’s strawweight champion Rose Namajunas is set to make her debut in the flyweight division at UFC Paris this weekend against Manon Fiorot. This will be her comeback fight, as her last appearance inside the Octagon was in May of 2022, when she lost her strawweight title to Carla Esparza.
Despite being a two-time strawweight champion, ‘Thug Rose‘ has recently revealed that she does not plan to compete in that division again. She further expressed that her natural weight is currently around 135 lbs., and going down to 115 lbs. (the strawweight limit) will not be easy for her.
While weight cuts are known to be very difficult for fighters, Rose did not have much trouble making weight for her strawweight fights. However, her decision to not move down to strawweight again was due to the consequences of dehydration and other health complications.
“To take punches like that (is not good), and then your kidneys and everything, I just started getting bigger naturally, and on top of that, once I decided to move up, I lifted more weights. I ate a little bit more. I actually started eating breakfast again—I stopped fasting so much,” said the former strawweight champion.
Namajunas’ decision to move up to flyweight also did not come all of a sudden, as she expressed that she always wanted to be a two-division champion. Her first fight in the 125-pound division is against top contender Fiorot, who is unbeaten in the UFC till now. It will be interesting to see if Rose can break her opponent’s streak and establish her dominance in the flyweight division too.
Rose Namajunas’ strawweight career in the UFC
Rose Namajunas is considered to be one of the greatest female fighters of all time, and rightly so. She has been a two-time strawweight champion and has dominated the division for quite a while. She is the only fighter to defeat the current 115-pound champion, Zhang Weili.
The two first fought in April 2021, when Rose became the new champion by defeating Weili with a brutal head-kick. She then defended her belt in their rematch in November of the same year, where she won by a split decision. Now that Weili is the reigning strawweight champion, a rematch would have been the perfect end to their trilogy. However, that does not seem likely right now, as Namjunas has expressed her desire to not return to her old division.
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The flyweight division is a fresh start for Namajunas in more ways than one. The former champion herself admitted that after her close loss to Carla Esparza, she was thinking about retiring from the fight game. However, she soon realized that this was not the way she wanted to bid adieu to her passion. So, she is back yet again and will look to make her flyweight debut a memorable one at UFC Fight Night on Sept. 2 at Accor Arena in Paris.
