“I am [happy that Joanna Jedrzejczyk is no longer champion]. She’s not a good person. I respect Joanna as an athlete, as a fighter but I don’t respect her as a person. I don’t think she’s a good person. She didn’t do a good job being a champion which Rose [Namajunas] does. Rose is a great champion and I love seeing her over there, I love seeing her act as the champion. I feel good about Joanna not being champion.
The way she acts, you know. She is very cocky, she don’t respect people. In The Ultimate Fighter, I don’t know if she was acting but she did disrespect my coaches and ME every day.
I hang out with her for like eight weeks and I know a lot about her.”
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Top strawweight competitors, Claudia Gadelha and Joanna Jedrzejczyk aren’t exactly the best of friends. The former opponents and TUF 23 coaches have locked horns twice inside the Octagon with each outcomes resulting in wins for Jedrzejczyk.
Now headed in separate directions in their careers, who knows if we’ll ever see a trilogy fight between the two.
Coming off of two straight title fight losses to Rose Namajunas, Jedrzejczyk will next be heading into her first non-title fight since the first Gadelha showdown when she takes on Tecia Torres at UFC on Fox 30 in July.
For Gadelha, she’ll be competing this Saturday at UFC 225 as she attempts to rebound off of her first career loss that wasn’t to Jedrzejczyk.
She’ll be taking on the inaugural UFC and Invicta strawweight champion, Carla Esparza in what is their third time being scheduled to fight. Gadelha was unable to make it to fight night on both of the first two bookings back when they were both in Invicta.
Gadelha vs Esparza will be the second fight on the televised portion of UFC 225’s prelims on FS1.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/7/2018.