Joanna Jedrzejczyk wants to be the first UFC fighter in history to simultaneously hold a title in two different weight classes.
Sound familiar?
Just a few months ago, it was reigning featherweight champion Conor McGregor who was aiming to put Rafael dos Anjos’ lightweight belt on his right shoulder as the perfect accompaniment to the 145 lb strap on his left.
But a late injury to dos Anjos scuppered McGregor’s chances of making history in the main event of UFC 196 and, ultimately ‘The Notorious’ was bested by late stand-in Nate Diaz.
McGregor now seems more focused on revenge than titles and he may be beaten by Joanna Jedrzejczyk to the honour of becoming the first fighter to be the best in the world in two weight divisions at the same time.
The strawweight champion takes on Claudia Gadelha next week in an ill-tempered rematch of their 2014 meeting, which was the closest Jedrzejczyk has come to losing her undefeated record.
The main event of The Ultimate Fighter 23 finale takes place on the Friday night of international fight week. Jedrzejczyk has revealed that, after the Gadelha fight, she wants to move up to a currently non-existent women’s flyweight division and claim the gold there too.
“I think it’s going to be the last fight between me and Claudia Gadelha, because I have plans to move to a different weight class, to 125 lbs if there would be an option to fight for a title next there,” Jedrzejczyk said in a media conference call this week. “We will see. I’ll focus on this fight and I think that I’m definitely going to win this fight.
“I want to be the first UFC fighter to hold belts in two different weight classes.”
Only two fighters have held titles in separate UFC weight classes but BJ Penn and Randy Couture didn’t hold their respective pair of titles simultaneously.
Jedrzejczyk wants to do just that but, to this point, there has been only one 125 lbs women’s bout in the UFC and that came last month in a special one-off fight between Joanne Calderwood and Valerie Letourneau at UFC Fight Night 89.
And Poland’s Jedrzejczyk foresees the official formation of a flyweight division following the success of that bout.
“I predict that, so I know it’s going to happen,” Jedrzejczyk said. “It was a good fight between Valerie and JoJo, the first catchweight at 125 lbs, but I think we need that division. So many girls from bantamweight can go down, so many girls from strawweight division can go up.
“So we should make that division the next division.”
