For the UFC strawweight champion Rose Namajunas, her biggest moment inside the octagon so far, would still be her first round TKO win over Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 217. However, up until that moment that shook up the world of women’s MMA, “Thug Rose” had won most of her fights via submission.
Namajunas is a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and while she is currently dominating the 115-pound division there is one name that caught her attention outside of the division. That name being Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gold medalist and champion, Mackenzie Dern.
Namajunas recently was a guest on the UFC Unfiltered podcast,Where she talked about Dern.
“Other than the weight issue, I thought she looked great,” Namajunas said. “That is something, I’ve always wanted to test my jiu jitsu against, that would be awesome, I would like to face her. But, she just has to get her sh-t together and that may be down the road.”
“She beat Gabi Garcia in a jiu jitsu match, so that would be awesome, and she can obviously strike a little bit. She has that heavy first step, that a wrestler has sometimes that good right hand.”
“You can tell she has that style developing. So it will be interesting to see if she can fix her issues and maybe she can be a future contender.”
We’d love an opportunity to watch these two women square off. Rose would certinally have her hands full in a straight Jiu Jitsu match, but those that count here out should remember that people counted her out before. She ended up beating what many people though was an unbeatable champion to take the belt and change everyone’s minds about Thug Rose.
Andy Gonzalez is a coach at Aces Jiu Jitsu Club. He has earned his BJJ Brown Belt under 2nd Degree Black Belt, Professor Mikal Abdullah. Follow Andy on Twitter at @GoGoGonzilla
Andy lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Amanda and their 3 beautiful children. Andy is also the father of a Marine who is honorably serving in the United States Marine Corps.