Joanne Calderwood believes Ariane Lipski could be ‘the one’ that will give her the bloody war that she dreams of

Making her debut at UFC 233 on January 26 will be the former KSW champion, the ‘Violence Queen’ Ariane Lipski. Welcoming her to the Octagon will be none other than Scotland’s finest, Joanne ‘JoJo’ Calderwood.

For Calderwood, she has officially turned the page on her career in her opinion as she is now ‘JoJo 2.0’ after returning to the flyweight division under the tutelage of John Wood at Syndicate MMA.

In her return after a year-long layoff and the divisional change, JoJo defeated Kalindra Faria via first-round submission (triangle armbar) at UFC Lincoln. It was the first submission win of her 15-fight career.

Despite showing a new bag of tricks, Calderwood still hopes that she can find the perfect dance partner to give her an all-out bloody war. Lipski…the Violence Queen…very well looks to be that opponent.

“I’ve watched a few of her fights now and I’ll probably study her more over the next few weeks,” Calderwood said on the Eurobash podcast. “I see her style and I see she has great technique and she’s aggressive.

Every fight I go into I feel like [my opponent will strike with me]. Ahead of the last one, I was thinking, ‘Man, this is going to be a standup war, this what I’ve been waiting for’. Then look what happened…within the first few exchanges she took me down.”

Lipski has her nickname for a reason as her fighting style somewhat resembles that of a 125-pound Cris Cyborg. Which for her fellow flyweights, is a scary thought. Especially for her being at just the young age of 24 and already being one of the very best in the world.

Because of this and both her and Calderwood’s styles, it would be very surprising if this fight doesn’t turn out to be the war that each is expecting.

“I’m always going to be looking for that stand-up war,” Calderwood said. “Every opponent I get, especially this one [I think it will be a stand-up war], but I don’t want to get too excited. When I watch her fights more and more I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, this is the one’, but I’ll be going into the Octagon knowing that it’s never happened before in my other MMA fights.

“It takes two to tango and I feel like every time I’m going in there with bad intentions. I just want to put on a show for the fans I have not been fulfilled in that regard with my MMA career.”

Motivation isn’t hard for Calderwood to find when it comes to making this dream a reality either. Especially when there are some other pretty damn good fights taking place at the recent events.

“We just saw that fight at the weekend [Chan Sung Jung vs. Yair Rodriguez], that was a crazy war and those are the fights that I dream of. I just don’t feel like I’ve found that dance partner that’s going to give me that fight yet. Hopefully, this next one will fulfill my dream of standing in the UFC Octagon, being bloody and being like, ‘Come on, is that all you’ve got?’”

on 11/21/2018