A first round KO against Zhang Weili at UFC 261 landed Rose Namajunas among the elites of the game.
There was no stopping Thug Rose as she made light work of the women’s strawweight champion Zhang Weili, knocking her out with a vicious head kick, in the very first round. She thereby became a two-time women’s strawweight champion.
Going into the fight as the underdog, Namajunas had nothing to lose as she had already relinquished her title once when she was knocked out by a Jessica Andrade slam at UFC 237. But little did the MMA community predict that she would finish the fight, that fast.
Weili looked completely lost and dumbfounded – such was the effect of Thug Rose’s kick, as the Chinese tasted defeat for the first time in the UFC, and the first knockout loss in her 23 fight career.
Namajunas’s head kick KO put her among the UFC greats, as she joined Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre, Valentina Shevchenko and others to become the eighth fighter in UFC history to finish an opponent in a title fight by via. head kick.
As for Weili, it would be back to the drawing board and coming back stronger to challenge for the belt again.
Rose Namajunas creates history with that ‘left headkick’
Not only did Namajunas become the eighth UFC fighter to win via. a head kick KO in a title fight, but also became the first woman in UFC history to win the same title on two separate occasions.
Namajunas won the strawweight championship for the first time when she beat Joanna Jędrzejczyk at UFC 217 with Daniel Cormier spurting out his iconic – THUG ROSE!!THUG ROSE!!.
She then defended it successfully against Joanna at UFC 223, before losing it to Jessica Andrade at UFC 237.
After her loss to Andrade, Thug Rose fought her way back earning a unanimous decision win over Andrade at UFC 251, and now here she is, back at the helm!
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