Rose Namajunas sees no reason to make things personal for her upcoming title fight against UFC champion heavyweight Zhang Weili, but she is definitely motivated by the politics of it all.
While preparing for the fight against Zhang for the 115-pound title at UFC 261 on April 24, Namajunas recently spoke about her Lithuanian heritage and the country’s struggle for freedom from the communist Soviet Union, which ended in 1990. Namajunas then told it with Zhang’s own homeland China, where the communist party remains in power today.
According to Namajunas, whose family hails from Lithuania, she found a new attempt to defeat Zhang after teaching her teammates in the history of Lithuania to liberate the country from communism after coming under Soviet rule after World War II. lived in power.
“I do not hate Weili or anything like that, but I feel like I have a lot to fight for in this fight and what she represents,” Namajunas said as he spoke to Lithuanian outlet LRT before UFC 261. ‘I was just, I was just trying to remind myself of my background and everywhere I came from and my family and stuff like that. And I wanted to teach my training partner Chico Camus about the Lithuanian struggle and just the history of it all. That’s why we watched ‘The Other Dream Team’ just to become like an overall sentiment we are fighting for. And just after you look at it, it’s just a great reminder of yes – better dead than red, you know?
“I do not think it is a coincidence that Weili is red. This is what she represents. It’s nothing personal against her, but it’s a big motivating factor why I fight and I fight for freedom and I have the Christ consciousness, I have Lithuanian blood and I have the American dream and all these things I take this fight with me. ”
The phrase “better dead than red” was a slogan popular in the late 1950s as a rally for anti-communism during the Cold War and the McCarthy era.
Lithuania lived for more than 40 years under communist rule of the Soviet Union, and the country was renamed the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. During those years, many war crimes were committed, while several uprisings took place while factions in Lithuania fought to break free from Soviet rule.
The country finally gained its independence in 1990 during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The documentary “The Other Dream Team” called Namajunas was a film released in 2012 that told the story of the Lithuanian basketball team that played during the 1992 Olympic Games. Before the matches, many Lithuanian players were part of the Soviet team, but after gaining independence, the country decided to host its own team.
With little money allocated to send a team to the Olympics, the group The Grateful Dead funded the Lithuanian basketball team, and they won a bronze medal that year. The term ‘the other dream team’ refers to the 1992 American team, nicknamed ‘The Dream Team’ after NBA players competed in the Olympics for the first time. The US took gold that year.
On a more personal note to Namajunas, her great-grandfather was killed by Soviet forces while serving in the Lithuanian army.
Of course, Namajunas seems to be tying Lithuania’s own history with communism to Zhang, as China had nothing to do with the country’s Soviet occupation. While China is still living under communist rule – the Communist Party of China – Zhang has never made any outward public statements supporting the government there.
However, it is also known that the Chinese government suppresses the difference of opinion by its citizens with censorship and sometimes even imprisonment.
Either way, Namajunas draw motivation from Zhang’s legacy as a fighter from China as they prepare to clash with the straw title that will grab at UFC 261.