Tatiana Suarez is bummed she won’t get to fight former UFC champion Rose Namajunas.
Just after Suarez made the move back down to strawweight, Namajunas (11-5 MMA, 9-4 UFC) will be making her flyweight debut against Manon Fiorot on Sept. 2 in Paris. Suarez has wanted to fight Namajunas for a while now and appears to have just missed a potential matchup as she enters the title picture.
“It’s really the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” Suarez said on “The MMA Hour.” “I’ve been wanting to fight her because I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m back to 115 (pounds), maybe I could fight Rose.’ And it’s like, she’s going back to 125. I’m like, crazy.”
Suarez (9-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) meets a different former champ in Jessica Andrade (24-11 MMA, 15-9 UFC) on Aug. 5 at a UFC Fight Night in Nashville. Undefeated Suarez explained that her desire to fight Namajunas is simply from a competitive standpoint.
“I think she totally dodged me,” Suarez said with a laugh. “No, I’m messing. Not at all. I think this was her plan all along. That’s not even me, I wouldn’t even say that if I thought that. Whenever I say I want to fight her, it’s not because I want to go beat her up or something like that, (like) I don’t like her. I just think she’s such a good fighter. Like, I’ll watch her and I’m amazed because of how great she is.
“I’m thinking, ‘Well, I want to fight the best of the best.’ I wanna fight the best people because obviously that means that I’m the best when I beat them. Or even if I don’t beat them, I still shared the cage with an amazing mixed martial artist. It’s all about the competition for me. It’s not about wins, losses, nothing like that. For me, it’s about competition, testing myself. That’s the stuff that I thrive on. I do it every day in the gym.”