What martial arts does Rose Namajunas use?

Born in 1992, Rose Namajunas is a mixed martial artist who is one of few UFC fighters to lose her championship belt only to later win it back. Not only this but Thug Rose is also known for her entertaining fights. Win, lose or draw, you know you’re in for fireworks when she steps into the octagon. There may be a good reason for this as well. This is because she is an incredibly skilled martial artist. Both in striking and grappling, Namajunas has proven her skills time and time again. Because of this, you may be interested to learn about her background in martial arts which is listed below. Here’s a comprehensive list of the martial arts that Rose Namajunas uses when fighting MMA.

Rose Namajunas is a Taekwondo black belt

It’s no secret that Rose Namajunas is something of an expert when it comes to Taekwondo. In fact, TKD was her first-ever martial art where she began training just aged 5. This would set her up for life and would eventually translate into Karate and kickboxing too. In short, that head kick you saw against Zhang Weili for the UFC straw weight title was no coincidence and was literally over 20 years in the making.

Aged 9 years old, Namajunas would go on to get her black belt in TKD. Sometimes, people criticize martial arts that are willing to promote kids to the rank of black belt – and in fairness, there are some genuine concerns behind this practice. With this said though, at this point, she’d trained for 4 years in total which is roughly the amount of time for your average person to achieve a black belt in the art. Regardless of this tradition – it’s fair to say that no one is looking at her black belt with criticism now and her kicks are a thing of beauty.

Rose Namajunas is a Karate black belt

Aside from Taekwondo, Thug Rose is also a black belt in Karate. This ties in nicely with her TKD skills and has a lot of crossover. Again, Namajunas earned her black belt in this art at a younger age. You may be familiar with her Karate technique when she successfully landed a front kick on Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Of course, the beauty of Karate is that it also offers punches and blocks too which will certainly come in handy whilst in the cage. When watching her UFC fights, you can really see her Karate background shine through, as she is very good at cutting angles and offers a variety of kicking techniques.

Combined with her Taekwondo and kickboxing background, it’s no wonder that Namajunas is considered incredibly dangerous with her kicks and you could say that she’s really taken the time to master the striking martial arts, especially when it comes to kicks which are the specialties of Karate and TKD.

Rose Namajunas is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu brown belt

Although Namajunas is known primarily as a striking-based martial artist, it would be unfair to ignore her Brazilian Jiu Jitsu skills. In fact, 5 of her 10 MMA wins have come by submission, with a whopping 4 of those being executed by the rear naked choke. In her second pro MMA bout, she even pulled off a flying armbar which tells you everything you need to know about the technical side of her submission game.

Against Angela Hill, she even finished an RNC whilst on her back which is incredibly difficult to do, whilst against the likes of Paige Van Zant, she wore her down and attacked the neck from the turtle position. This isn’t too surprising when you realize that she’s also a brown belt under Tony Basile which is the highest rank in BJJ after black belt. Unlike some MMA fighters though, it seems as though she truly is worthy of her brown belt and can apply submissions and grappling in the most intense of circumstances.

Rose Namajunas uses wrestling

Whilst in highschool back in Milwaukee, Namajunas was known to wrestle during her senior year. This ties in nicely with her BJJ skills, as having a dominant ground game can be wasted if you don’t have the skills to put someone on the floor. Often though, Namajunas is happy to strike and fight whilst standing, relying on her fists to do the talking. Because of this, the bulk of her wrestling is done from a defensive perspective.

That is, if an opponent wants to wrestle then Namajunas will try to defend takedowns and return to striking when appropriate. That’s not to say that her wrestling is poor though as most of the time this tactic works. She even used wrestling offensively when taking down Michelle Waterson which resulted in an RNC. If anything, this also shows her high fight IQ as she was able to mix up her strategy and not just spam striking. When you combine her grappling skills with her striking skills, it’s clear that Namajunas is incredibly rounded and doesn’t really have any holes. As a result, she makes for a very tough opponent in the UFC straw weight division.

Rose Namajunas uses Wing Chun

Interestingly, when fighting Zhang Weili, Namajunas was seen training Wing Chun during the warm up. This is intriguing as Wing Chun isn’t too common in MMA or the UFC, but was used by Anderson Silva during his prime. In this warm up, you could clearly see Namajunas using trapping techniques with her coach, and was mostly blocking his hands and pummeling back inside.

Some people argue that Wing Chun is invalid in an MMA setting as it’s unrealistic. However, it may just be that it’s done inefficiently by most fighters that don’t know how to use it correctly. Whatever your thoughts, this seemed to work though as Namajunas ended up winning the bout. It will be interesting to see if Namajunas uses Wing Chun in the future, or talks openly about training it.

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