Esparza then scored a takedown with just over a minute to go in the round, but Namajunas forced her off and landed a right hand. Esparza may have taken the round, however, with an early takedown that Namajunas immediately got up from.Įsparza scored a takedown in the fourth round and tried to jump to Namajunas’s back, but Namajunas got her off. The action seemed to pick up a bit in the third, but not to a point where one woman ran away with the round. Esparza outstruck Namajunas 10-6 in the second and nearly scored a takedown on the defending champion. Both Esparza and Namajunas landed just three strikes each in the opening round, none of them significant. The first two rounds of the fight were completely quiet, with both women acting generously patient. Shes bigger and stronger than she was in the first fight and we saw that when she easily took down Carla in the 5th. Rose didnt take into account that shes improved immensely in all areas of the game, and fought too scared of the takedown. Esparza won the fight via third-round submission. The Rose/Carla 2 fight was an anomaly and in any other circumstance Rose beats her. This was a rematch from the finale of The Ultimate Fighter season 20, which crowned the first UFC strawweight champion. Reactions to Carla Esparza and Rose Namajunas putting on a stinker as Esparza wins back strawweight title at UFC 274Ĭalling it a tactical encounter might be generous, but what can’t be argued is that Carla Esparza is once again the UFC women’s strawweight champion - over 2,000 days since she first won the title - defeating Rose Namajunas in the UFC 274 co-main event.

We didn’t get much of a chance at that.By Thomas Albano 3 months ago Follow Tweet “You have these battles where you’re trading with someone and then that sets up others things too. “It’s hard to throw at someone who’s not going to stand in front of you and not really engage,” Esparza said. However, she does feel like her threat of the takedown made Namajunas hesitate when striking. So, it definitely made it a little bit bittersweet on how the fight went and kind of how the fans have been reacting.”Įsparza can’t exactly pinpoint why the fight played out the way it did. “You want to win a fight showing your skills and everything you’re working for, and you want to dominate and make a statement. “You don’t want to win a fight like that,” Esparza said. She would go on to lose her title in the following fight against Joanna Jedrzejczyk in March 2015.Įsparza is proud to have fought her way back to the belt, but does admit the nature of the fight and subsequent fallout does damper the moment. We’re going to show up like we did the first time, but it’s just going to be a higher-skilled version of that fight and that’s what I was looking forward too.”Įsparza, 34, first became champ in December 2014 when she submitted Namajunas to become the inaugural UFC strawweight champion. I was envisioning in my head, ‘We’re going to get Fight of the Night.’ Like this is the performance. I was excited to go back in front of the crowd and put on a show. “I hadn’t fought in front of a crowd since 2019 because of COVID. I hate that I couldn’t put on a show for the fans. “Nobody wants to see a fight like that, nobody wants to be part of a fight like that. “Most definitely,” Esparza told MMA Junkie. Esparza (18-6 MMA) is currently on a five-fight winning streak, her latest being a first round stoppage victory over Yan Xiaonan back in May. The new champion is well aware of the public disdain for the bout, and finds it to be fair. Carla Esparza will get her much deserved rematch against Rose Namajunas in 2022 according to UFC President Dana White. With just 67 combined significant strikes landed over 25 minutes, it’s been touted as one of the most lackluster championship fights in UFC history.īoth Esparza (19-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC) and Namajunas (11-5 MMA, 9-4 UFC) have been criticized for their performances in the aftermath of the event. It was an uneventful fight that ended in a split decision favoring Esparza. The more than 12-year veteran defeated Rose Namajunas to reclaim the UFC strawweight title in the co-main event of Saturday’s UFC 274 at Footprint Center in Phoenix. Carla Esparza took home UFC gold, but that also came with a big chunk of criticism.

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