Former UFC strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk has been candid about her struggles making the 115-pound limit. One notable weight cut that stuck to her was for her UFC 217 title fight against Rose Namajunas, where she revealed she had to lose 15 pounds in 14 hours.
These struggles had urged her to move up to the newly established women’s flyweight division, where she fought for the vacant title on Saturday against Valentina Shevchenko. She did end up losing via unanimous decision, but this time around, the 31-year-old Polish fighter is putting her health and well-being at the top of her priority list, more than anything else.
“I will drop one more time to the strawweight division,” Jedrzejczyk said during the post-fight presser (transcript by MMA Fighting). “But I’m not getting younger, I’m getting older. And I’ve been in this business for 15 years, so I want to take care of my body.
“This camp I realized how it can impact your body, your brain and your performance being on such a strict diet for so many weeks. Or the weight cut. Definitely, I want to protect myself, protect my body.
“But yeah, the other stupid thing is I want to do this one more time — that’s it. One more time. We always give second chance to ourselves and I want to do this.”
UFC president Dana White himself is in agreement with the idea of seeing Jedrzejczyk back down at strawweight.
“I love her, she’s such a great fighter and such a good person,” White said during his post-fight presser. “I actually consider her a friend. I want her to take some time off, go spend some time with her family and then we’ll get together and talk about it. But I’d like to see her stay at [115 pounds].”
Jedrzejczyk expressed her intent to face the winner of the next 115-pound title fight between Namajunas and Jessica Andrade, which has yet to be scheduled and finalized.
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