The highly anticipated strawweight title fight between reigning champ Zhang Weili and former champ Rose Namajunas at UFC 261 was over with a single well-placed head kick from Namajunas in the first round.
Zhang opened with several leg kicks and a couple of jabs. At just a minute and fifteen seconds into the first round, though, Namajunas landed a head kick that dropped her opponent to the canvas, finishing off the fight with a few strikes until the referee stopped the action.
Namajunas was declared the winner by knockout at 1:18 into the first round and regained the UFC strawweight title. Through the victory, she became the first woman in the UFC to regain a title she’d previously lost.
Rose Namajunas was emotional after becoming strawweight champion for a second time
#UFC261 pic.twitter.com/Ytl6jiTvJI
— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) April 25, 2021
Namajunas first claimed the strawweight title when she defeated Joanna Jędrzejczyk at UFC 217 in 2017. She defended the title against Jędrzejczyk once before losing it to Jessica Andrade at UFC 237 in 2019.
Zhang claimed the title from Andrade in 2019 and defended it against Jędrzejczyk last year in a fight that many called one of the best in UFC history.
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