Joanna Jedrzejczyk is without a doubt one of the rising stars in the UFC. After her brutal title win over Carla Esparza in March, she delivered another one-sided, dominant victory last Saturday, when she dismantled Jessica Penne in her first title defense at UFC Berlin.
After the fight, women’s bantamweight queen and mainstream superstar Ronda Rousey was praising her ‘badass’ 115-pound counterpart in this Tweet.
Comparisons between the Olympic bronze medalist and the Polish Muay Thai expert increasingly arise. Both are unbeaten in MMA competion and champion of their respective divisions, both have very decorated backgrounds in other martial arts and both are very outspoken, charismatic, marketable and media-friendly characters.
During the post-fight press conference, Jedrzejczyk said, “I follow Ronda, I am big fan of her. She is simply the best for me. But I want to be Ronda Rousey in the strawweight division.”
Jedrzejczyk is currently 4-0 in the UFC, with two extremely dominant performances in title fights. Claudia Gadelha gave her the closest fight of her career, a split decision in December. To catch up with Rousey, she will have a long way to go, though. The former Strikeforce champion is currently 5-0 in the UFC, all of her fights have been title fights, four of them first-round finishes, the last two in under a minute. Adding to that, Rousey recently published her first best-selling book, starred in multiple Hollywood movies and is a regular in talk shows and on magazine covers.
But even if Jedrzejczyk won’t be the next Ronda Rousey anytime soon, she is definitely bringing more attention to the women in the UFC. Something only Rousey was able to achieve before her.