Classy Claudia Gadelha issues statement after blowout UFC 212 defeat of Karolina Kowalkiewicz

On Saturday night, in the co-main event of UFC 212, we watched Claudia Gadelha and Karolina Kowalkiewicz – the strawweight division’s number one and two ranked fighters – collide in what looked like it could be a number-one contender fight. From the early vantage point, this one seemed to have all the makings of a competitive, back and forth scrap. In the end, however, it was not. Instead, Gadelha quickly grounded the fight, at which point she took her Polish foe’s back, locked up the rear-naked choke, and coaxed out the tap for the win. It all went down in just over three minutes.

In the wake of this lopsided win over the former title challenger Kowalkiewicz, the streaking Gadelha took to social media to issue a classy statement, sharing her respect for Kowalkiewicz and thanking her for taking the fight.

See Gadelha’s full statement here:

“At the end of the day, when we fighters get old we will be able to talk to our grandchildren about our battles and we will be very proud of the people we have become through the struggle. Each fight makes you not only a better athlete but a better person, and that is my goal in the martial arts world: to evolve, learn to believe, to improve, to build, to reform and to help. Congratulations to all the athletes who take this sport seriously and thank you for the ones that make it happen. Congratulations @karolinakowalkiewicz!” 

See Gadelha’s post on Facebook below:

With her defeat of Kowalkiewicz, Gadelha built on the momentum of a recent defeat of Courtney Casey, and further separated herself from a failed attempt to capture strawweight gold from dominant champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk. The Brazilian star is now an impressive 15-2 in sum and 4-2 in the UFC, with both her losses coming against Jedrzejczyk.

What did you think of Claudia Gadelha’s UFC 212 win?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/5/2017.