UFC 268: Rose Namajunas tells Zhang Weili ‘maybe we can still be friends one day’
- ‘Obviously I kicked her in the face, so she doesn’t wanna be friends any more,’ says UFC strawweight champion
- Namajunas thought she – and not Zhang – would be booed in first fight after comments criticising Communism
After the unexpected animosity that scarred the build-up to their first fight, Rose Namajunas has extended an olive branch – of a sort – to Zhang Weili ahead of their UFC 268 strawweight title rematch in New York.
Regardless of intent, Namajunas’ words seemingly did the trick, and “Magnum” was roundly jeered inside VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena before succumbing to a shock 78-second TKO.
“She can think what she wants to think, I don’t fault her for that,” Namajunas told Ariel Helwani on Wednesday’s episode of The MMA Hour. “A lot of what I do seems like it’s so genius, but I’m just being myself.
“You go in there with a game plan but it’s a fight. I don’t sit around planning each and every step of the way, so whatever I said in my interview is what I said, because that’s how I truly felt at that moment in time.
“Whatever else came from that … I was worried I was gonna get booed, because of all the terrible press and video I got. If she wants to think that, she can think that, but she doesn’t have to.”