Rose Namajunas is still excited to compete in the main event of UFC Denver, but there’s a part of her that wishes she had her original opponent.
The former UFC strawweight champion faces Tracy Cortez in the flyweight headliner this Saturday at Ball Arena. Namajunas was originally slated to face rising contender Maycee Barber before Barber was forced to withdraw from the bout.
Namajunas has seen how Barber has acted on social media, and her methods of callouts recently — even using some of Namajunas’ teammates as potential bait — which is why the competitive fire in Namajunas was a little more stoked to face Barber.
“It’s just been a few interactions that I’ve had with her, or on social media a long time ago, just like silly stuff,” Namajunas said Wednesday on The MMA Hour. “She posted a picture of me with my training partners and X’d out all of their faces and then circled my face and was like, ‘I’m coming for you next.’ I’m just like, ‘OK.’
“She always tries to say that by beating my training partners, [she thinks], ‘I know that broke her.’ You don’t know what could break me, because there’s a lot more that has to break me. I don’t have anything personal against her, but the competitor inside of me, it’s like, yeah, I really wanted to show her what’s up.”
After losing the 115-pound title to Carla Esparza at UFC 274 in May 2022, Namajunas moved up to flyweight and is 1-1 in her new weight class. In her divisional debut, Namajunas dropped a decision to Manon Fiorot at UFC Paris this past September before bouncing back with a main event decision win over Amanda Ribas in March at UFC Vegas 89.
Looking to climb the ranks of a second division, she was able to digest the news of Barber’s departure and Cortez’s entry pretty quickly.
“Definitely, fighting Maycee was super exciting at the time,” Namajunas said. “I was a little disappointed to find out the news, but now that it’s Tracy, it’s just different. I’m just as excited.
“I went through that process of being like, ‘Oh, man,’ and then as soon as they were working on Tracy, it took me a second, but once I made that transition, it took me a day to process it, and it was like, ‘Alright, this is what we’re doing.’”
