Rose Namajunas has no issues with giving Joanna Jedrzejczyk a rematch.
The two will meet for the strawweight title at UFC 223 on April 7 from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
For Namajunas (7-3), the hard part is figuring out a way to improve upon her dominating performance from last November vs. Jedrzejczyk (14-1).
“That’s the tough part (doing a rematch),” Namajunas said during her appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience (thanks to MMAjunkie for the quotes). “You can’t paint the Mona Lisa twice. It has to be something different, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, either. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing but keep getting better obviously all the time.”
Namajunas, who was a runner-up on the season of The Ultimate Fighter that saw Carla Esparza claim the title, was a heavy underdog in that first meeting. She claimed a first round knockout of Jedrzejczyk, dealing her the first UFC loss of her career.
“(I knew I was going to knock her out) because everyone is so desperate for the takedown,” Namajunas said. “Everyone tries to take her down from what I see. I stand across from Valentina Shevchenko, and we go back-and-forth, and it’s not a thing to me. I’ve got Pat ‘HD’ Barry in my corner. I’ve got Trevor Wittman. I’ve done taekwondo striking my entire life. It’s not something I’ve never seen before. That Dutch style of kickboxing, that’s great, that’s hard. It’s very intimidating to stand across from, but you know it’s very rhythmic on the beat. It’s just something: It looks scary, but it’s nothing to be scared of.”
