Rose Namajunas is eagerly anticipating her main event fight at UFC Denver, although she admits she was looking forward to facing her original opponent.
The former UFC strawweight champion is set to face Tracy Cortez in the flyweight headliner at Ball Arena this Saturday. Namajunas was initially scheduled to fight Maycee Barber, but Barber had to pull out of the bout.
Namajunas has observed Barber’s behavior on social media and her recent callouts, including using Namajunas’ teammates as targets, which fueled Namajunas’ competitive spirit 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 in an interview. “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 has a 1-1 record in the new weight class. In her divisional debut, Namajunas lost to Manon Fiorot at UFC Paris last September before securing a main event decision victory over Amanda Ribas in March at UFC Vegas 89.
Despite the change in opponent, Namajunas is focused on climbing the ranks in her new division. She quickly adjusted to the news of Barber’s withdrawal and Cortez stepping in.
“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.’”