Ronda Rousey is the face of women’s MMA today in part due to her dominance inside the cage and her charm outside, as well. She is undefeated at 12-0 and has bee inside the cage for a total of 25 minutes, 36 seconds in that span of fights.
The Judo medalist is coming off of a 34-second knockout over number five-ranked Bethe Correia. The champion’s amazing credentials has been creating a lot of media buzz with celebrities like Will Smith and Demi Lovato talking about her latest victory on social media. She has planted women’s MMA in the UFC.
However, there is another women’s UFC champion that deserves more credit and could very well be more of a dominant and well-rounded fighter than Ronda Rousey. Her name is Joanna Jedrzejczyk, currently the UFC’s Strawweight Champion.
Jedrzejczyk hails from Poland and has become a European star after her latest two dominant victories over Carla Esparza and Jessica Penne. She is also undefeated at 10-0. The Polish native has also signed an exclusive clothing deal with Reebok to validate her popularity.
Just as how Ronda Rousey came into the UFC already a decorated martial artist by winning a bronze medal in the 2008 Olympics for Judo, Jedrzejczyk is a four-time European champion in Muay Thai before her entrance into the UFC.
Jedrzejczyk has been just as dominant and if not more more so than Ronda Rousey.
The 27-year old fighter is a decorated striker, but her takedown defense has been exceptional in her most recent title fights. She stuffed most of Carla Esparza’s takedowns and using her fluid combos to eventually finish her off in the 2nd round. Overall, she has an amazing 84% takedown defense rate.
She would stuff Jessica Penne’s takedowns too and bloody her up by using her effective Muay Thai. Jedrzjeczyk out landed Penne in total strikes, 126-25, and out landed Esparza, 53-4, according to FightMetric.
The Strawweight Champion has a colorful personality too. Jedrzejczyk is very confident in her abilities and likes to play mind games with her opponents to win the mental warfare. Jedrzjeczyk thinks that she broke Carla Esparza by her intense staredowns and giving Esparza a cookie after weigh-ins.
Another prime example is when Jessica Penne was the #1 contender to face Jedrzjeczyk, the Polish fighter would play puns with her last name, “Penne”, by posting Instagram pictures of herself eating penne.
Her brash tactics has fans curious every time she steps into the Octagon. Jedrzjeczyk is the only women’s MMA champion out of the continent of Europe and her mixture of dominance and charisma has her going in the right path of reaching the popularity of Ronda Rousey.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
