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Former UFC women's strawweight champion Rose Namajunas recently set the MMA community abuzz with her comments about current UFC women's strawweight champion Weili Zhang.
Namajunas recently shed light upon the Lithuanian people's struggles against communism and their oppression when Lithuania was a part of the Soviet Union (USSR aka Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
She revealed that she draws inspiration from "The Other Dream Team", a sports documentary highlighting Lithuania's fight against communism. Namajunas notably stated that one of the motivating factors in her upcoming fight against Zhang is what the latter represents.
The belief is that Namajunas was referring to the country Zhang hails from, which is China, aka the People's Republic of China (PRC), which has been a communist nation since 1949.
On an episode of ESPN MMA's Ariel Helwani's MMA Show, Helwani claimed that Weili Zhang has never publicly revealed her political views. Helwani suggested that some people believe Rose Namajunas shouldn't have spoken about Zhang's personal political beliefs, as Zhang herself has never been vocal about the same.
Rose Namajunas responded:
“Yes, that is true. And I don’t know what her beliefs are. But here’s the thing, it’s that, and this is a question maybe that we should ask her or whatever. But can we really even know what she actually believes? And from my experience, or not from my experience, but, you know, she may be being told what to say. You know, I don’t know, and do we know exactly what she believes?”
Ariel Helwani once again claimed that Weili Zhang hasn’t publicly expressed her political views. Helwani then asked Rose Namajunas if she regrets her recent "better dead than red" comments against communism. Namajunas replied:
“No. Yeah, I mean, for me, and from my experience, you know, being in with communism, like, from what I know is that you can’t freely have an opinion. You can’t criticize your government. I can talk about America, and how imperfect it is, and how there’s just a lot of things messed up about us, and stuff like that. And I’m very grateful for that freedom to do so.” (*H/T Sportskeeda for the transcription)
Following the communist takeover of mainland China in 1949, the country gained a reputation for enforcing rigorous adherence to the principles of communism and communism-based nationalism among its citizens.
Criticism of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is allowed, but only to a certain extent, as criticism deemed anti-communist and/or anti-national could land an individual behind bars. Furthermore, communist China has also time and again been condemned for its alleged human rights violations.
The ongoing Uyghur genocide, atrocities against the Tibetan people, state-sponsored terrorism (sponsoring terrorist groups in other countries), and border disputes with neighboring countries like Japan and India are a few outstanding issues facing China.
A lack of freedom of thought and expression, enforced disappearances, human trafficking, and organ harvesting are also problems that China has lately come under the scanner for.
Rose Namajunas aims to regain UFC gold by beating China’s Weili Zhang
Rose Namajunas lost her UFC women’s strawweight title to Jessica Andrade, who then dropped the title to Weili Zhang. Namajunas subsequently avenged her loss to Andrade and is now set to fight Zhang.
The UFC 261 (April 24, 2021) card features three title fights, one of which will witness Weili Zhang put her UFC women’s strawweight title on the line against Rose Namajunas. Thug Rose has emphasized that she truly believes she has what it takes to beat Zhang and reclaim UFC gold.
