Namajunas vs. Kowalkiewicz

This is the official discussion thread for Namajunas vs. Kowalkiewicz. Let's see what you've got.

Rose has been looking better and I think I'll favor her here but I really wasn't too impressed with her performance against Tecia. Felt like she couldn't really get an advantage on the ground where I expected her to, and she sort of took the third round off even though the first two rounds were pretty close. Didn't compare to how technically dominant she looked against Paige, and while Tecia is better I still don't know if Rose will ever quite live up to her hype.

Karolina is a better striker with more diverse weapons than anyone Rose has faced before. She also has excellent takedown defense.

Another fight that people are overzealously picking a finish in. Karolina isn't a KO arist and while it's possible for rose, I think both girls are durable enough standing to keep it up and make it to the bell. Edge to rose for creativity and aggression.

Eh, I think what won her the fight against PVZ is exactly the fight she cannot win against Kowalkiewicz. She frustrated Paige by boxing her up from outside Paige's range. Rose's boxing has improved vastly, but I think she loses a boxing match to Karolina. She's not THAT good at it yet and had a very singular approach against Paige that consisted of mainly jabs and 1-2s. That kind of non-varied approach won't work against Karolina.

As for TDD, Karolina has great balance, is strong and Rose is more of a clinch'n'trip or clinch'n'toss kinda gal, so I don't really see that being too much for Karolina to handle either.

Rose is great, but I feel this fight is tailored stylistically towards Karolina. I feel Rose's best chance would be on the mat (though I don't see her getting Karolina there or holding her down being that easy) but Rose has become very confident in her striking (as she should) and I don't think she understands just how raw it still is, especially compared to Karolina's. She'll get her licks in and touch up Karolina's face a bit, but I feel there'll be quite the speed and skill difference and Karolina will have a much more varied attack and put on more volume for another tough decision win.

* Edited at 07.27.2016, 12:28 PM ET *

This is so disrespectful to Karolina

@mikeyg, watch the fight again, the only reason the PVZ fight got to the ground so much was because PVZ clinched her, not the other way around. Rose was super happy to fight the whole fight striking. Which is something I think, at least to start the fight off, she'll try to do against Karolina.

Karolina won't be forcing clinches so she'll be harder to take down, Karolina knows how to manage distance, PVZ doesn't, Karolina will most likely tag Rose WAY more on the feet than PVZ. Rose isn't a TD artist. She banks on certain situations to take girls down, she doesn't have that as a high percentage option if she sees the striking game isn't going her way and I personally believe that in this fight the striking game won't go her way because she lack speed, experience, options.

And I don't think the Karolina/Tecia analogy is anywhere close to reality. They're not anywhere close to each other stylistically, physically or in any other aspect of the sport. Also, I don't think Tecia's better than Karolina anyway, let alone a better version of her, but that's just my opinion.



EDIT:: By the way, don't get me wrong, I see this as a very evenly matched fight and wouldn't be compltely surprised if Rose dominated from bell to bell or finished the fight early nor if Karolina dominated the fight from bell to bell (would be a little surprised if Karolina finished it early). I was just highlighting the little things that make me think Karolina has the tools to edge the evenly matched fight in her direction.

* Edited at 07.28.2016, 5:54 AM ET *

I don't have enough "evidence" to say you're wrong, as of now I'm going mainly on hunches and the way I see the stylistic clash. As you stated before, though she's won, none of Karolina's fights have been dominant so far, so based on what we've seen to date, your points hold most ground.

Thug Rose will use her submission skills to force Kowalkiewicz to tap in the 2nd round.

This will be great action bout , but these two should be particularly intense this time, as their lands of heritage , Lithuania and Poland have quite an intertwined and storied and history together ( mostly positive in the larger picture , but also with some negative times too ..)

* Edited at 07.29.2016, 8:37 AM ET *