Rose Namajunas left the home crowd in Denver happy thanks to a thorough five-round victory over Tracy Cortez in the featured bout of this past weekend’s UFC Fight Night event.
The former two-time strawweight champion said the 25-minute victory was “for sure” the best of her three outings since moving up to the flyweight division.
Namajunas was originally scheduled to face Maycee Barber in the headliner at Ball Arena but Barber withdrew from the bout due to ongoing health issues and was replaced by Cortez on short notice.
It’s unclear if UFC brass is interested in rebooking that matchup. Namajunas sounded indifferent when asked about Barber by Sportsnet’s Aaron Bronsteter in Colorado. Instead, she’s looking to potentially getting her most recent loss back.
“I always wanted to rematch Manon (Fiorot),” Namajunas said. “I feel like we had a really close fight and I broke my pinky in the first minute. That was all the way over in Paris. Rough journey but I feel like I could probably contend with her again and take it from her. I would love that fight in Lithuania. That would be awesome.”
Namajunas has Lithuanian roots and her fight with Fiorot in September 2023 took place in Fiorot’s native France. The UFC has never held an event in Lithuania.
Fiorot, 7-0 in the UFC, won a unanimous decision over Namajunas and has done enough to warrant a title shot at 125 pounds. Current champion Alexa Grasso and former champion Valentina Shevchenko are scheduled to have their trilogy bout at some point later this year, which leaves Fiorot waiting on the sidelines.
If the UFC is not interested in booking a rematch between Namajunas and Fiorot, then the former champ ultimately said she’d take on “anyone.”
“I’m just slowly building,” Namajunas added. “I’ve been through a lot of life changes the last few years, so I know that I’ve bounced back from losses and had tremendous momentum like right after that. I’m a little older now so it’s taken me a little longer to build momentum and big things in my life but it’s all part of God’s plan and part of his timing.”
One of the changes Namajunas alluded to was not having Trevor Wittman in her corner. She chose not to elaborate on why she split from her former coach for personal reasons.
Namajunas holds multiple victories over both Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk and would join Amanda Nunes as the only other woman to win titles in multiple divisions if she one day manages to become the flyweight champion.
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