If there’s one thing Rose Namajunas, the two-time former UFC women’s strawweight champion, is never without, it’s her refreshing ability to share the honest truth at every turn.
So, in a sport as unforgiving and violent as MMA, it would typically be a red flag to hear a fighter, still presumably in the midst of their fighting prime, talk so casually about how much she wrestled with concerns over whether she still wants to do this for a living in the 16-month aftermath of her bizarre title loss to Carla Esparza in their 2022 rematch.
But no one else has had quite the unique journey of the 31-year-old Namajunas (11-5), who has faced disastrous defeats (and the subsequent quandary about her future) many times before only to pick up the pieces and return somehow better off for having endured the experience.
For most fighters, a loss like the one Namajunas was forced to digest after UFC 274, when she lifelessly allowed the title to slip through her hands, would be enough to break them. But Namajunas has been here before and come through the other side.
From her 2014 title loss in her UFC debut against Esparza through being dropped on her head to lose the title against Jessica Andrade in 2019,…
