Five months ago, when Rose Namajunas showed up in Manhattan to fight for the women’s strawweight title, she was supposed to become the answer to a future trivia question. The one that goes: “Who did Joanna Jedrzejczyk defeat to tie Ronda Rousey’s all-time mark for title defenses for women in the UFC? Answer: Rose Namajunas.”
Of course, it didn’t work out that way.
Instead Namajunas treated her first visit to New York as a kind of ayahuasca trip for self-discovery, her own personal Peru in which Jedrzejczyk was nothing more than a piece of trauma she realized she didn’t need to hold onto.