UFC 251: Jessica Andrade vows to keep calm, and carry away a shot at redemption against Zhang Weili
- Brazilian admits she was reckless in surrendering strawweight title to Chinese phenom in 42-second TKO loss
- Andrade faces fellow former champ Rose Namajunas in title eliminator on Fight Island and promises to pick her moment this time
It took 42 seconds for China’s Zhang Weili to strip the UFC strawweight title off Jessica Andrade. It’s taken the Brazilian 11 months to come to terms with playing a part in her downfall.
“I think that I got really excited and ahead of myself,” said Andrade. “I wanted to finish that fight quickly and I wanted to go back home and that’s where I went wrong. I ended up getting knocked out.”
Now, “Bate Estaca” (20-7) is back and preparing for a rematch with American Rose “Thug” Namajunas (8-4) at UFC 251 in Abu Dhabi on Saturday that, for all intents and purposes, plays out as an eliminator to decide the next fighter to go into battle against the Chinese phenomenon.
Andrade and Namajunas have a little history of their own, of course. At UFC 237 in May last year they spent a round and some more slugging it out before Andrade slammed Namajunas to the canvas – at 2.58 of the second round – to claim the strawweight title and finally deliver on the potential she had always shown in a decade inside the cage.
Maybe that move was a hint at what would eventually be Andrade’s undoing against Zhang in Shenzhen last August, that desire to get things done and dusted as soon as possible. No doubting that Zhang’s sheer talent played a massive role as well, and the Chinese fighter has since carved a slice of UFC immortality thanks to the five-round war that saw her defend her crown against Poland’s Joanna Jędrzejczyk (16-4) in arguably the greatest fight the women’s side of the sport has seen.