Now that Joanna Jedrzejczyk has her rematch against Rose Namajunas booked for UFC 223, she’s looking back on her first-round knockout loss and giving some reasons for it. For the martial artist formerly known as Joanna Champion, it wasn’t Rose’s superior gameplan or that stiff right hook that dropped Joanna twice, it was a bad weight cut that defeated her.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Jedrzejczyk explained that she, like Ronda Rousey, were victims of an overly-harsh weight cut which rendered them useless in their respective losses to their opponents. Ronda was famously knocked out by Holly Holm, and Joanna tapped to a plethora of strikes by Namajunas after getting flattened on the feet.
“I always wanted to talk to Ronda about how she felt the night before that night that she lost to Holly Holm. I was afraid to ask her before because I was winning.
Actually, we have one agent (in common) and I spoke to him and told him that my legs went numb and that I felt a bit groggy or something like this. The funny thing is Ronda felt the same way; she had a terrible weight cut before Holly Holm.
The funny thing is, people don’t believe that your brain can be frozen, but the weight cut can change the game. It can and that’s the worse thing. It can (happen) and this is what happened to me and Ronda. We paid the price for the weight cuts and that’s the thing. They didn’t go through the weight cut, so they don’t understand. They don’t understand what we had to go through, but one day I will explain to all of them.”
Ronda Rousey hasn’t spoken or confirmed that this is true, while Jedrzejczyk will make that problematic weight cut again this April.
(Via BJ Penn)
