She didn’t necessarily know if it would end the fight, but Rose
Namajunas had an inkling that she would connect with a head
kick at some point during her matchup with Weili Zhang
at UFC
261.
As it turned out, the head kick made Namajunas a two-time UFC
champion, as she floored Zhang with the maneuver before ending
their co-main event bout with follow-up hammerfists on the mat 1:18
into the opening stanza at Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena in
Jacksonville, Forida, on Saturday night.
The setup for the kick was almost as nice as the execution:
Namajunas feinted a low kick with her lead leg before going
upstairs and connecting cleanly with her opponent’s chin.
“I felt really good. I was calm. I had to control myself and
control my breathing and stay calm. She kinda touched me with the
low kicks and she hit a nice little jab, but I just stayed calm. I
don’t know how to explain it I guess,” Namajunas said.
“I saw her body fall over really stiff and I was like, oh dang that
definitely worked a lot better than I thought it was going to. But
I did see that kick landing in my mind leading up to this fight. I
didn’t think that was going to be the finish, but that was one of
many ways that I seen this fight going. As soon as she kinda turned
over, I thought there was maybe a moment she could pop back up and
wake back up again, but those hammerfists are just money and I knew
it was over after that.”
In victory, Namajunas became the first repeat female champion in
UFC history. In the past, luminaries such as Ronda
Rousey, Holly Holm
and Joanna
Jedrzejczyk have attempted to regain titles they lost only to
fall short. Namajunas, who initially contemplated retirement after
losing her belt to Jessica
Andrade, plans on defending the championship for the long haul
while also fighting for a bigger cause.
“No matter who my opponents are, I want to defend this as many
times as I can,” she said. “But what I really want to do is to use
this to build MMA academies in a couple different locations, so
that’s the idea and vision that I had this week. I always knew an
idea of what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to work it into
my career and so that’s my plan. I still have to go hash it out,
but that’s my vision.”
For Namajunas, maintaining that motivation to compete ties in
directly with her out-of-the-cage endeavors.
“I want to produce fruit with this seed that I’ve been given. I
just want to give back, and I think that’s gonna be the main focus
right now.”