Rose Namajunas is ready to go toe-to-toe with Natalia Silva.
Former two-time strawweight champion Namajunas (14-7 MMA, 12-6 UFC) takes on rising flyweight star Silva (19-5-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC) at UFC 324 on Jan. 24 from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (Paramount+).
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Namajunas’ striking won her the UFC strawweight title twice – a TKO of Joanna Jedrzejczyk in 2017, then a head kick knockout of Zhang Weili in 2021. Going up against a taekwondo purple belt in Silva, Namajunas went back to what brought her to the dance. She sought help from a taekwondo Olympic bronze medalist.
“We have three weeks of training camp left, so I’m very excited,” Namajunas said on her YouTube channel. “We have this girl Kristina Teachout coming in town. She’s a taekwondo bronze medalist, Olympian taekwondo practitioner, and so I’m very excited because obviously I’m fighting Natalia Silva, so she’s got that taekwondo base and everything like that, and she adapts it for MMA very well. But even myself, that’s my base, too. I just don’t use it as much as she does.
“I rely on my boxing a lot, but I want to get back in touch with my roots. So we’re just kind of bringing her in just to kind of help with that, and get my dexterity up with my kicks and stuff, and reaction, and timing, and everything like that. I don’t plan on her mimicking Natalia by any means, but I’m just a true martial artist. I feel like everything helps and everything can be applied if you have the right imagination for it. I’m really excited about that.”
Namajunas finds herself a sizable underdog against Brazil’s Silva, who’s undefeated in the UFC. Silva is on a 13-fight winning streak.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Rose Namajunas going back to taekwondo roots for UFC 324
