Joanna Jedrzejczyk has a few tricks up her sleeve
Strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk may be one of the UFC's scariest fighters these days, but the Muay Thai specialist first got into fighting simply to get healthier. "I was 16, I just wanted to do something in my life," she recently told Submission Radio.
"I wanted to be healthy, I wanted to lose some weight and I went for my first training. In the beginning I didn't know what Muay Thai meant. You know? But I liked it so much, and after six months of training I had my first competition in Poland. I won, and after that I knew that I wanted to do it."
JJ didn't just lose some weight and get stronger, she became a champion kickboxer in Europe, and now is a world champion in MMA. Being an athlete for a living is a dream come true for the proud Polish striker.
"Now I'm healthy, I'm in shape and I'm happy because I finished physical education as well," she said.
"So I could be a teacher, a personal trainer, but yeah I'm a professional athlete."
Joanna said that she had big hopes for herself almost immediately after she began training and competing. Still, achieving those dreams could not have been easy.
Making a transition into MMA, with all its varied requisite skill sets, from Muay Thai initially daunted Jedrzejczyk. Instead of letting her weak points scare her away, however, she worked at them until she was a whole different fighter.
"I had some dreams. Like in the Muay Thai I always wanted to be the best," she remembered.
"Then they wanted me to fight in MMA. And in the beginning it wasn't easy, because in my ambitions, I always have high ambitions. You know what I mean? And in the beginning it was difficult to learn wrestling, Jiu Jitsu, and I didn't know what exactly was gonna happen. But I had a dream and because [my] dream came true 14th of March when I won the UFC title. So I was dreaming about it and I was training hard for it. So that's why I survived."
Joanna defends her UFC title for the first time June 20 in Berlin, against Jessica Penne. Though Penne may seem to many observers to be less of a threat than Jedrzejczyk's last opponent - then-champ Carla Esparza - the charming killer knows that she can't understimate the challenger.
"No. Every fight [is] going to be more difficult," she said, wisely.
"You can be underdog, but you can beat the champion. This is what I did last time. And so I have lots of respect to my opponents. Of course me and my trainers, we have some game plans for this fight like for every fight, but you never know what's going to happen in the Octagon. So you must have a different plan, second by second, when you're in the Octagon."
That said, Joanna certainly has confidence. "Jessica [is] working very good on the ground, her wrestling is good, but not as good as Carla's wrestling," she said.
"But I think she can strike better than Carla and then she will try to take me down. But we will see. They cannot do it, yeah? I'm going to stay the champion (laughs)."
As for how, exactly, she plans to take Penne out, Jedrzejczyk isn't giving away any secrets. "I will do my things," she ended.
"Keep on striking and have a few aces in my pocket. But I will show you June 20 in Berlin."
