Rose Namajunas Considered Not Fighting at UFC 223 After Conor McGregor Bus Attack

Rose Namajunas will be the first to admit that she enters most of her fights with a little bit of doubt about competing.

However, that feeling was much stronger heading into UFC 223 after the strawweight queen was a bystander as Conor McGregor and his entourage attacked a bus transporting Namajunas and a group of UFC fighters from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Thursday.

Yeah, I did [think about not fighting],” Namajunas admitted during the UFC 223 post-fight press conference. “But I think a lot of times leading up to many fights I think that. I’ll doubt myself or question myself. But the voice was strong this time.”

Namajunas was closer to the action than she would have liked when McGregor hurled a dolly at a bus window, shattering glass and causing injuries to fighters Michael Chiesa and Ray Borg. Chiesa and Borg were eventually pulled from the card due to injuries suffered in the attack. McGregor and his crew were trying to get to Khabib Nurmagomedov, but his actions ultimately affected many more than his primary target.

Had things turned out just a little bit differently, it might have been Namajunas who would have been forced to exit the card.

“The [dolly] nearly came at my window,” Namajunas said. “Thankfully the bus driver was on point. He was backing up the bus as it came to my window, and it ended up hitting Michael Chiesa instead. Unfortunately, so thanks, Michael. It shook me up just because I didn’t know how far it was going to escalate. All the guys inside, they wanted to fight back, they wanted to go jump out of the bus. I didn’t know if they were going to open the door and they were gonna all come in…they’re obviously not directly after me, but I’m just caught in this scenario.

“My imagination goes crazy. I jump to the negative pretty quickly. It was a lot of thoughts going into this fight. I’m just grateful to be in one piece and be happy and healthy.”

The incident did not appear to affect Namajunas’ performance inside the cage. After needing only a single round to put away Joanna Jedrzejczyk in their first meeting at UFC 217, “Thug” Rose secured a hard-fought five-round verdict in the rematch on Saturday night.

Namajunas expected that her first 115-pound title defense would be difficult, but there’s no way she could have imagined what would transpire just two days before UFC 223. In the end, it was just another bit of adversity to overcome.

“I’ve just been in tough spots before,” she said. “I’ve had manual fights before, they weren’t like auto-pilot. This was just another level of that, a new challenge, a development in my growth. I welcome that. I just wanted to prove to myself that I can once again face my fears and it’ll pay off.”