Rose Namajunas predicts rival to be the next straweight championFrontkick.online

Rose Namajunas thinks Zhang Weili will beat strawweight champion Carla Esparza. Photo: USA Today Sports

After knocking out Joanna Jędrzejczyk in June, former strawweight champion Zhang Weili might fight Carla Esparza for the title next.

One who has faced both Esparza and Weili twice is Rose Namajunas. The former two-time champion thinks that Weili is on another level skill-wise and will become the strawweight queen again if she plays her cards right.

“My feelings are that Weili will really not have much problems in that fight,” Namajunas recently told MMA Fighting. “Carla is very interesting because she’s very unassuming and things like that. Obviously, I think our fight was kind of an anomaly, the last one. Because we both had some concerns about not messing up our faces and getting bloody and stuff like that, but I don’t know if she’ll necessarily have that concern going into a fight with Weili.”

Read more: Rose Namajunas admits comparison to Ronda Rousey made her fail

Rose Namajunas could fight in flyweight

Since losing the strawweight title to Esparza in May, “Thug Rose” claimed to be lifting a lot of weights to put on more muscle mass, and even considered a future move up to flyweight.

However, there she would face flyweight champion and friend Valentina Shevchenko.

“I do consider myself to be Valentina’s friend, so in order for me to do that, we would have to be set up, not for life, but it would have to be for a very good reason for me to even want to step to her,” Namajunas said.

“Thug Rose” has trained with Shevchenko and knows how good she is in practice, but is well aware that fighting her is a completely different thing.

“Obviously, as a martial artist, that would definitely be very interesting. But, yeah, I don’t know yet. It would be difficult with the emotions and things like that, and I feel like I’m a different person right now. I would have to think about it,” Namajunas said.

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