Claudia Gadelha predicts Joanna Jedrzejczyk will use illegal shots in rematch

This week, Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Claudia Gadelha will have their highly anticipated rematch, this time for the UFC women’s strawweight championship. The pair’s first fight, which was arguably one of the closest fights in UFC history, took place back in 2014 and saw Jedrzejczyk win via split decision.

Since then, Jedrzejczyk has gone on to win, and defend her title twice, while Gadelha bounced back to defeat Jessica Aguilar via unanimous decision nearly a year ago.

Ahead of the fight, Gadelha believes that when she drags the champ into deep waters, she will try to use dirty tactics to get the win. She spoke to MMAJunkie:

“In my mind, in my heart, I’m undefeated. I never lost a fight in my life. To me, I lost this fight to these judges, not to Joanna. If you watch this fight 100 times, there’s no way she beat me. The only thing she did was that knockdown in the last seconds of the first round. If you watch that whole fight, I dominated everything.”

“I think this changed my training camps. The way I’m training to knock people out and to submit people, instead of winning by points. That’s the only thing that changed in my game. But other than that, it’s all the same. I’m not going to be thinking about the judges when I’m fighting. I’m going to think about what I have to do to win the fight.”

In regards to how their rematch will go, Gadelha said:

“I think Joanna will try to escape from me the whole time,” Gadelha concluded. “I’m sure she’s going to put her fingers on my eyes, like she always does. But I’ll do my game. I’m ready for this. I won the first fight and I’ll show everybody who’s best.”