In a long interview by BT Sport with Dana White, he claims that “Thug” Rose Namajunas does not want to fight for the title. He thinks that Rose does not want the pressure to be the champion. With Namajunas out of the picture for the title according to Dana, Carla Esparza will face Zhang Wei Li for the belt.
Rose Namajunas responded by calling it fake news. Namajunas’s partner and trainer, Pat Barry also said that they “Absolutely want the title fight”.
I asked Rose Namajunas’ coach/fiancé Pat Barry about this.
His response:
“That is absolutely not true. We absolutely want the title fight.
Who would turn down a title fight? We just dont want to air this out publicly. If there was some confusion they can call us to clear it up." https://t.co/qoxmzLGyxk— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) December 16, 2020
Hopefully, the UFC and Rose’s team just had a misunderstanding and will clear things up soon. Namajunas is coming off a win against Jessica Andrade and maybe the only fighter worthy of the title shot.
There is a lot of interesting news in Dana’s interview. He indicated that the dream fight for 2021 for him is Jon Jones vs Israel Adesanya super fight. There have been talks with Jones and that moving up to heavyweight gives Jones new challenges.
When asked regarding Khabib, he is slightly confident that he could make an offer that the champ could return for the coveted 30-0 record. Khabib indicated that he is retired completely but Dana is still persistent for the Russian champion to return once more.
When asked about Mcgregor vs Poirier, he thinks that both fighters have gotten better since their last encounter and that the fight is a guaranteed firework. Mcgregor’s last fight was against Donald Cerrone and has been out of the octagon ever since.
Khamzat Chimaev vs Leon Edwards was also asked about the status. He thinks it will happen soon and that it is a super high profile fight for the public. When asked what Edwards has to gain if he beats lower-ranked Chimaev, he said that when looking at the past circumstances Edwards encountered, he could skyrocket to the title picture, same case with Chimaev.
The projected year for the UFC in the year 2021 is big. Many potential huge fights are lined up. The year starts with a Mcgregor card which is always a guaranteed high revenue fight for the UFC. Even with the pandemic for this year, the UFC still had a huge success in the PPV section.
I Take what Dana White says these days as, guess it could be true. Or not.
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