UFC women’s strawweight champion Rose Namajunas is riding her first successful title defense, as the fighter defeated Joanna Jedrzejczyk in their highly anticipated rematch at UFC 223. However, it would appear that the reigning champion may not be back inside the octagon for a while following an injury.
Speaking on ESPN’s Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show, Rose Namajunas revealed that she is suffering from a neck fracture that is having debilitating effects on her training.
“Physically I’ve got some injuries that I’ve been dealing with for a while. I had a neck fracture [actually] I have a neck fracture. I have some stenosis which means like, the spinal cord that goes through your vertebrae or whatever, the hole for it is a little smaller because of the fracture.
“Sometimes I was just getting real bad headaches every day in training camp and stuff like that and it was just the physical activity, sometimes it was just like the stress would aggravate it even more and like flying places really makes it worse and just stuff like that. So that’s been something I’ve just been focusing on, doing little exercises and stuff and just lots of rehab. There’s really not a lot of information out there.”
“Yeah, I dunno, I will have to see how things play out. I have no interesting in getting right back in there at the moment. I think I need to let things play out.
“I think honestly, the top-5, after beating Joanna twice and for her to be so far [ahead] and who knows how she will turn up against Tecia. She could hit her win one punch and she’s out so who knows. But the level that she’s at, it’s hard for me to see the top-5 and who the next contender is. I feel like the top-5 there needs to a clear contender.”
