You can’t stop change.
If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want some milk. The title of the popular children’s book, might not be as silly as you think. It’s a deep commentary on the slippery slope on human nature, and ultimately the only answer is…more. Strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk is set to take on #1 Contender Claudia Gadelha as the main event of the TUF season finale. The highly anticipated matchup has drawn even more heat after the airing of the show where Claudia and Joanna go at each other’s throat even to the point where they get into an unofficial brawl and the end of taping – head kicks and all. Despite the first fight being razor thin and the beef between these two coming to a crescendo, Joanna is finding a way to look ahead. All the way to the top of the not yet existent Women’s strawweight title.
“I think it’s going to be the last fight between me and Claudia Gadelha, because I have plans to move to a different weight class, to 125 if there would be an option to fight for a title next there,” Jedrzejczyk said. “We will see. I’ll focus on this fight and I think that I’m definitely going to win this fight.”
When asked to clarify:
“Yes, I want to be the first UFC fighter to hold belts in two different weight classes.”
This is an interesting comment seeing as Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta have been sticklers in regards to adding new divisions to the women’s weight classes. His denial of a featherweight division kept Cris “Cyborg” out of the UFC for years, and even though she’s currently on the roster, at 140lbs she’s essentially an exhibition match. But the 125lb weight class is much different. There are lots of women who fall in between the 20lb gap of 115 to 135, you would see a lot of fighters either dropping down or going up to be at a more natural weight. The fight between Joanna Calderwood and Letourneau at UFC Fight Night 89 only makes matters worse, with the strawweights putting on a barn burning performance at the catch weight of 125.
“I predict that, so I know it’s going to happen,” Jedrzejczyk said. “It was a good fight between Valerie and JoJo, the first catch weight at 125, but I think we need that division. So many girls from bantamweight can go down, so many girls from strawweight division can go up. So we should make that division the next division.”
This is especially interesting for the current bantamweight champion Miesha Tate. The seattle native recently admitted on the Joe Rogan Podcast (JRE) that she walks around at about 140-145 lbs, making it more than plausible she could drop down in weight if the opportunity presented itself. Miesha Tate vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk for the flyweight championship? What do you guys think? No matter who the opponent is, Joanna Plans on being a champion at multiple weight classes. But not just a champion, a trailblazer.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I want to be the first champion of the 125-pound division.”
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