Morning Report: Joanna Jedrzejczyk wants to be ‘female BMF’

She used to want to be called “Joanna Champion’ but now there’s a new title Joanna Jedrzejczyk is looking for: The Female BMF.

Earlier this month, Jorge Masvidal claimed the inaugural BMF title with a dominant, yet controversial win over Nate Diaz at UFC 244. The BMF title - the brainchild of Diaz that was then appropriated by the UFC for marketing purposes - became the talk of the MMA world in the lead up to UFC 244 and a number of fighters wanted to put their own spin on it. But after watching her American Top Team teammate claim the inaugural title, Jedrzejczyk now wants to get in on the action. Speaking with the South China Morning Post recently, Jedrzejczyk said she’s wants to be the first woman to carry the women’s BMF mantle.

“People used to call me violent, savage,” Jedrzjecyzk said. “Jorge just won the belt – the baddest motherf*cker belt. I want to be the female BMF.”

Setting aside the grammatical complexities of a female BMF, should such a thing exist, Jedrzejczyk would have a fairly good claim for the title. Joanna Champion is the second-longest reigning female champion in UFC history with five successful title defenses (behind only Ronda Rousey’s six) and also challenged Valentina Shevchenko for the flyweight title. On top of that, Jedrzejczyk’s fighting persona certainly does feel in a similar neighborhood to that of Masvidal and Diaz. So when you consider all that, Jedrzejczyk believes there’s only two women could lay claim to the FBMF title at this point, herself or Rousey.

“These [other] girls can make it, they can win the belt, but there’s nobody like Ronda Rousey, like me,” Jedrzejczyk said. “People can doubt me, and they’ll do that forever, but show me a better, cleaner fighter in the UFC or in general. Of course, Amanda Nunes is the GOAT right now, but Ronda Rousey had six successful title defenses, me, five. Rose [Namajunas]? One title defense. Jessica [Andrade] couldn’t defend the title.”

The FBMF title seems unlikely to come to pass anytime soon so instead, Jedrzejczyk will have to be satisfied with another shot to reclaim the strawweight title she lost to Namajunas. Dana White has revealed that Jedrzejczyk will be the first title challenger for the newly minted champion Weili Zhang, though a date has not yet been set.

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Thanks for reading and see y’all on Monday.

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