Joanna Jedrzejczyk expects to fight the UFC Kansas City co-main event winner next

This weekend, in the co-main event of the UFC’s trip to Kansas City, Michelle Waterson and Rose Namajunas will collide in a crucial strawweight contender bout. The winner of this fight could well earn the next crack at the winner of Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Jessica Andrade’s UFC 211 title fight – at least, that’s what the champ Jedrzejczyk thinks.

“I believe that the winner of the fight between Michelle Waterson and Rose Namajunas will be my next opponent,” the champ told Fox Sports. “I will be watching this fight.”

“It’s a big fight between Rose Namajunas and Michelle Waterson,” she continued. “I like both of them. Both girls, Rose and Michelle are very talented. Michelle, she has got so much experience. She’s a former Invicta world champion. It’s amazing. She has got this experience. But Rose, she’s knocked on the challenger’s door, she was so close so many times. She fought with Carla Esparza, she almost won the belt before I won with Carla Esparza. Rose had a good fight with Karolina Kowalkiewicz, she almost got the chance to be a challenger.

“She’s young and she’s talented, but I think she needs more experience. I believe that one day she will become a UFC world champion but Michelle Waterson is very tough.”

From there, Jedrzejczyk said that she can’t pick a winner for the fight, simply because she has no idea which way it’ll go.

“I don’t like to predict the fights,” she said. “I know that anything can happen in the fight. Even me, I visualize victory before every fight, I want to win like everyone but it’s a sport. MMA is very beautiful but a very brutal sport. We step into the Octagon and one person must win and one person must lose. It’s the rule.

“I don’t have prediction because we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Who do you think wins the UFC Kansas City co-main event? Does the winner get the next crack at Joanna Jedrzejczyk? Sound off, PENN Nation!

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 4/12/2017.