It’s now been several months since UFC strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s last fight: a lopsided, five-round beatdown of the highly regarded Jessica Andrade back at UFC 211 in May.
Since then, the MMA community has been growing increasingly restless waiting for the announcement of the dominant strawweight champ’s next fight. Luckily, that announcement seems to be very near.
On Wednesday afternoon, the champ took to Instagram with an assurance that the announcement of her next fight is “coming soon.”
“Fight announcement coming soon,” the champ said on Instagram. “What do you think? Who is going to be my next opponent and where?”
Well, without the aid of a crystal ball, there’s no way to know for sure who Jedrzejczyk will fight next, or where it goes down – but we sure can make an educated guess.
This October 21, the UFC will make a triumphant return to Jedrzejczyk’s native Poland – this time to the city of Gdansk. Though a middleweight scrap between Thiago Santos and Michal Materla was briefly targeted as the card’s main event, that fight quickly fell through, leaving this Polish Fight Night without an adequate headliner. The Polish star Jedrzejczyk, of course, would fill that role perfectly – though for the moment, nothing is official. Maybe they’ll save her for a pay-per-view.
As for an opponent, the only choice would seem to be Rose Namajunas. Though the UFC could well surprise us with a different strawweight title challenger, Namajunas seemed to put her stamp on the shot back in April, when she dominated Michelle Waterson to a second-round submission win.
Since winning the UFC strawweight title with a brutal thrashing of inaugural champ Carla Esparza, Joanna Jedrzejczyk has defended it with thumpings of Jessica Penne, Valerie Letourneau, Claudia Gadelha, Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Andrade. Think she makes it six-straight defenses in her next fight? Make your voice heard in the comments section.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 9/6/2017.