Tatiana Suarez thinks Rose Namajunas should have trusted her grappling more against Carla Esparza.
Namajunas (11-5 MMA, 9-4 UFC) lost her strawweight title to Esparza (19-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC) last month at UFC 274 in a rather lackluster affair. Namajunas was uncharacteristically hesitant to engage and in a tough fight to score, the judges decided Esparza was the more active fighter.
Being the last fighter to defeat Esparza, Suarez (8-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) has engaged with the champion on the ground and thinks Namajunas should have done the same even though she was out-grappled and submitted in her first fight with Esparza in 2014.
“I was very surprised at how little she did,” Suarez said on The Schmozone Podcast. “Like she was just so scared of the wrestling, and I honestly don’t think that Carla is that much better in that department than Rose. So I felt like Rose could have grappled with her a lot more, and it would have been fine.
“I felt like she could have beat her in that department. She fought Weili Zhang, and she grappled with her a lot during the fight, and she did well. So I was very surprised that she didn’t just try and grapple more. Like, why not go on the ground? Like, why not?”
Suarez isn’t sure if Esparza is the one who should have gotten her hand raised even though she admits that she was confused by the scoring herself.
“I don’t really know if she really beat her,” Suarez said. “I don’t even know what that was. I’m still trying to process it. … It was like the battle of the feints out there. How do you even score that fight?”