Former UFC strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk has struggled to keep some of her fans on side following her losses to Rose Namajunas and Valentina Shevchenko, mostly because of how she handled defeat. Following her first loss to Namajunas, a fight in which she was dominated and knocked out, Jedrzejczyk blamed the loss on a bad weight cut. As she continued to make and provide excuses for her losses fans began to slowly turn against her, losing some of the love and respect she had held while she was ‘Joanna Champion’.
However Jedrzejczyk seemed to recapture some of her old glory in her recent victory over Michelle Waterson while headlining a UFC Fight Night in Florida. Following that victory she has once again spoken about the reasons behind her recent losses, this time pointing to the deterioration of her relationship as a key factor behind these losses and all of the issues that came before them.
During a recent segment of UFC Unfiltered Joanna addressed the issues that she had been having with her now ex-fiance over the course of the past two years. “People in Poland know more, but people in the states and worldwide, they don’t know much about my private life. The last two years were pretty difficult for me. It was a rough time, and I feel like 2019 is a special year, so I can’t wait for 2020.
Joanna is good with the excuses
“I broke up with my fiance, and we broke up before my first fight with Rose Namajunas, and this terrible weight cut happened, and I broke up again,” she said. “This year I found out that my [previous Polish] manager messed up my money, and then I found out that my fiance was cheating on me.
“That girl called me; I think that she was afraid that I was going to beat her up so badly, but I was like, ‘No, I’m kidding.’ I just want to show to people and tell people that there’s always something going on in our lives. It doesn’t matter who you are. If your private life is not going in the right direction, you’re not going to be successful in the sport, or in the business.”
It’s always difficult to know what really impacts a person and what is simply an excuse made by someone unable to accept defeat or accept a loss. There is a clear way to understand which is true in this case, however, as Joanna has been clear that she expects 2020 to see her return to the form she held at the peak of her career.
If she does, these reasons she has given as to why she struggled throughout the past two years can be taken as legitimate. If she does not, it may seem as though her time has just passed and she is no longer at the top of the game.
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