Carla Esparza Calls Title Bout a 'Bummer,' Believes She Fought Smart Game Plan

As conservative as it might have been, Carla Esparza stuck to her game plan at UFC 274 — and the end result was a championship victory.

Esparza emerged from an action-starved bout with a split-decision triumph over “Thug” Rose to claim strawweight gold at the Footprint Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Saturday night. It was a perplexing performance from both athletes, as neither was willing to engage for the majority of the contest, which predictably brought out the boo birds throughout the 25-minute affair. For Esparza, pressing the action too recklessly would have only set her up for defeat.

“I felt that I fought a smart game plan,” Esparza said at the UFC 274 post-fight press conference. “I felt that if I would have gotten too wild and too reckless, I would have set myself up to be a highlight reel. Rose has incredible timing and placement on her strikes. She’s had some awesome head-kick finishes and dropped people, so I didn’t feel like it was a smart person to get reckless with.”

While Esparza was undeniably pleased to begin her second reign as 115-pound champion, she wasn’t going to try to convince anyone that her rematch with Namajunas was one for the record books.

“That’s always a bummer,” Esparza said. “You always want to put on a show for the fans, so it’s unfortunate to be a part of a fight like that.

“But I felt that I was putting the pressure on, I was coming forward, I was the aggressor, I was holding on to the center of the Octagon, so at the end of the day, I did what I could, and I tried to fight my fight, but fights go like that sometimes.”

Esparza did make an effort to wrestle in the fight, though it wasn’t especially successful with just two takedowns landed in 11 attempts. Still, the Team Oyama product believes she made more of an effort to force the issue than her opponent did. Namajunas was oddly reluctant to pull the trigger, though her reaction to the final verdict suggested she felt she did enough to win.

“I don’t feel that Rose pushed the pace,” Esparza said. “As a champion, you really need to go after it, and [say], ‘This is my Octagon.’ I don’t really feel that she was aggressive enough to say, ‘Hey, this was my win,’ so at the end of the day, I got the belt, and if she wants a rematch, I’m down for that, too.”

After such a lackluster affair at UFC 274, it doesn’t appear likely that an immediate Esparza-Namajunas trilogy is in the cards, however. UFC president Dana White indicated the the winner of the Joanna Jedrzejczyk-Weili Zhang rematch will likely be the next No. 1 contender at 115 pounds.

“I don’t think anyone is clamoring for that rematch,” White said of Esparza vs. Namajunas. “We’ll have to figure something else out. Rose is one of the best. She’s always gonna be there. We’ll see what happens.”