Joanna Jedrzejczyk wants to defend her title two more times before considering flyweight

As soon as Valentina Shevchenko revealed her plans to move down to flyweight last week, the first matchup many people considered was clash between “Bullet” and UFC strawweight champion, Joanna Jedrzejczyk.

Shevchenko has beaten the Polish champion three times in Muay Thai competition, but the two have never faced off in MMA.

When asked about a potential fight between her and Shevchenko, Jedrzejczyk refused to say she wanted to fight the bantamweight challenger due to the respect she has for her.

However, she did say she would consider moving up a weight class after her upcoming bout with Rose Namajunas at UFC 217 and another subsequent defense in 2018.

A win over Namajunas would see Jedrzejczyk equal Ronda Rousey’s six title defenses of the bantamweight championship.

“I have a very good relationship with Valentina Shevchenko,” Jedrzejczyk told Ariel Helwani on the latest episode of The MMA Hour.

“I don’t want to say I want to fight her, but we will see. I was talking a lot about the 125 division, but it was before I was working with Perfecting Athletes.

“Now I feel great. I feel healthy. I make my weight very easy, but who knows? This year I want to be focused on my strawweight belt, tie Ronda Rousey’s record of six title defenses and in March I want to fight one more time in the strawweight division and after that we will see.

“I may go up to the 125 division. It’s all about the right time and the right decision, so we will see.”

Jedrzejczyk claimed that her goal is to clean out the strawweight bracket.

“There is a lot of pressure but I don’t take it this way. I see it like I don’t want to stop and this is what keeps me going,” she said.

“I want to keep proving to people that I’m simply the best and I’m the champion for a reason. This will be my sixth title defense. I want to clean out the strawweight division and that’s what I’m going to do.”

The champion also dismissed speculation that she only wanted to compete on the upcoming Madison Square Garden card due to the financial gain that would come from the event.

“After the fight with Jessica Andrade I felt I wanted to fight in New York and I said that at the press conference,” she said.

“That’s the thing – I do my job. I do my job in the gym, I do my job outside of the gym and when I go tot the fight I always put on a show.

“I met Dana (White) at International Fight Week and he said, ‘Kid, I love you, if you want to fight in New York, I’ll try to do my best and put you on this card’, but of course there are so many things going on. You know, like someone got injured, Jon Jones got cut and they wanted to put me on a different card. Like I said, I do my job and I want others to do their job.

“It was my goal to fight on this card. At that time, six months ago, I didn’t know GSP was going to fight on this card. People are saying I only want to fight on big cards, but this isn’t true – at the time I didn’t know Georges St-Pierre was going to fight at MSG.

“The other thing, you get taxed an extra eight percent in New York, so this is not about the money. I set my dreams and I follow my plan everyday, that’s why I’m so successful.”