Well, UFC 237 sure ended with a bang after a bunch of disappointing bouts before that. Rose Namajunas looked absolutely excellent for a round and a half against Jessica Andrade, punishing her with great striking and almost finishing her with an armbar. Jessica Andrade’s power and aggressiveness was being used against her to great effect. Until it wasn’t. Andrade scooped Namajunas up against the cage. Namajunas was trying to use a kimura to prevent being slammed. But she held onto it too long, and instead of rotating over when she was being dropped on the mat, she tucked in a little bit. She basically got powerbombed - folded up like an accordion. And Thug Rose was immediately unconscious. Jessica Andrade saved the card for Brazil, and she’s the new strawweight champion of the world.<doc-sep>Despite getting outclassed on her feet through nearly two full rounds, Jessica Andrade coerced the UFC women's strawweight title through sheer strength and force. Andrade (20-6) picked up reigning 115-pound champion Rose Namajunas and slammed her on top of her head and neck in Round 2 to bring a violent end to their UFC 237 main event bout at Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro via second-round knockout. Referee Marc Goddard instantly waved off the fight at 2:58 of the second round after Namajunas (8-4) was knocked out cold from the impact. "I was very certain in what I had to do in that second round," Andrade said. "I never threw that move, I never piledrived anyone in the UFC. That's my nickname and I wanted to do that. I knew she was slowing down." Can't get enough UFC? Subscribe to my podcast State of Combat with Brian Campbell where we break down everything you need to know in the Octagon. Namajunas, who entered the fight on a 13-month layoff due to injury following a pair of exciting title wins over Joanna Jedrzejczyk (who defeated Andrade in 2017), put forth a blistering first round that acted like a highlight reel of her incredible evolution as a striker. Entering with advantages of three inches in both height and reach, Namajunas landed stiff jabs to open a cut above Andrade's left eye and put forth a clinic on footwork and changing angles to offset Andrade's pressure. Andrade, 26, a former bantamweight who has reinvented herself as a knockout puncher at 115 pounds, was willing to take the damage throughout in order to get close enough and twice got her hands on Namajunas in the opening round for slam attempts that were thwarted by the champion securing Kimura attempts while in midair to minimize the impact of the landing. In Round 2, Andrade continued with her relentless pressure and began to catch Namajunas in comprising situations as she backed up in straight lines with her hands down. Eventually she got close enough for a third slam attempt that saw Namajunas' commitment to try and hook a kimura leave her neck exposed to the slam. "It's just a huge pressure off my shoulders," Namajunas cryptically said after the fight. Namajunas had made a curious decision earlier in the year to pass up a chance to defend her title in March against Andrade in Las Vegas. Instead, she insisted that the two fight in Andrade's home country of Brazil and explained that making the fight as difficult as possible would help bring out the best in her. For one round, it appeared as if Namajunas' bet was paying off. But Andrade's toughness and rugged determination to stalk forward without ceasing helped her stay in the fight, just as she did in her title loss to Jedrzejczyk two years ago when she landed hard punches late in the fight despite being down on the scorecards. While it was Andrade's stamina and pressure that allowed her to get close enough to Namajunas to deliver the finishing blow, it was her impressive strength that won her the title in a finish that was even more alarming than Andrade's one-punch knockout of Karolina Kowalkiewicz last September. Andrade now owns the most wins in UFC history by any female fighter with 11. "I'm very happy but this is really his belt," an emotional Andrade said as she handed the belt to her coach, Gillard Parana. "If he hadn't put the gym together 10 years ago, I wouldn't be here." CBS Sports was with you for every punch, kick and submission attempt from Brazil with our live blog below. If you are having trouble viewing the blog, please click here. UFC 237 card/results Jessica Andrade (c) def. Rose Namajunas via second-round TKO (slam and punches) Jared Cannonier def. Anderson Silva via first-round TKO (injury) Alexander Volkanovski def. Jose Aldo via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27) Laureano Staropoli def. Thiago Alves via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28) Irene Aldana def. Bethe Correia via third-round submission (armbar) Ryan Spann def. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira via first-round TKO (punches) Thiago Moises def. Kurt Holobaugh via unanimous decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-27) Warlley Alves def. Sergio Moraes via third-round TKO (punches) Clay Guida def. B.J. Penn via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-27) UFC 237 updates, highlights Thanks for stopping by.<doc-sep>Any degenerate can tell you the surest way to analyze a fighter is to gamble on them, because nothing identifies holes in a fighter’s game quite like losing money. For that reason — and perhaps that reason alone — Rose Namajunas was the sharp’s choice on Saturday night for strawweight title defense against Jessica Andrade. On paper, she was the superior fighter. It was always her fight to lose. Yet Namajunas came into UFC 237’s main event as a slight underdog, a handicap created perhaps more of emotional matter than technical. She was heading to Brazil, where Andrade would have the partisan crowd, because she challenges herself by defying convention. If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that Namajunas doesn’t mind confounding her public. She’s motivated by karmic rhythms and the pull of The Greater Good, sideline properties that — as a champion — can be filed away in the sport’s mind as “new wrinkles.” And besides, she wanted to depressurize the situation in her own unique way — to put it all on Andrade to perform, and leave herself with the most simplified task possible: That is, to get in, kick ass, get out. She wanted to momentarily take the weight off the title as she carried it back to Colorado, or leave the damn thing there for good. Through the first round-and-a-half Saturday night, she was putting on a clinic. She was snapping the jab off of Andrade’s face, and every time Andrade would wince in anticipation of that she would punctuate with straight right hands. Everything was landing crisply and intently, the kind of striking display that, through spectator astonishment, quickly becomes art. Andrade began bleeding immediately. The commentators, Dominick Cruz, Daniel Cormier and Jon Anik, were warning that Andrade couldn’t withstand that kind of abuse for five rounds. She wouldn’t even make it through a couple of rounds at the rate she was absorbing Namajunas’s strikes. Even as Andrade picked Namajunas up and hoisted her to the heavens for a slam, Namajunas was fishing for the Kimura from the broadside of her shoulders. When Andrade followed through with that slam a couple of sequences later, she was fending off an armbar attempt once they hit the ground, proving all routes to victory were pretty much shut down or closed. Everywhere Namajunas was presenting crises for the challenger. “Thug” Rose an underdog? It was like the old cliché: Taking candy from a baby. Then it happened. Midway through the second round, Andrade heaved Namajunas up yet again, and this time slammed her headfirst into the canvas. Namajunas didn’t bounce back up. Namajunas didn’t really move at all. She was out. Next thing you know Andrade was sitting on top of the fence, basking in the hysteria of her masses, signaling for a belt around her waist. All fortunes can change just that fast in the fight game. And what gives gambling its libido is that it commonly does; nothing burns a deposit slip quicker than a flash knockout. Afterwards, in her post-fight interviews, Namajunas validated some of the instinctual reservations people had about the fight. Namely that she was already contemplating the exits from the fight game, because the weight of the title was a little overwhelming. “It’s just a huge pressure, you always got to obsess about everything,” she told TSN. “I think what it is, is prior to becoming a champ you put a lot of importance on getting the belt and all that stuff. It is important, but it’s only kind of financially important. Really, at the end of the day, it’s all about facing your fears, and to me, I realized once I’ve become a champ and defending the belt, having the belt itself is. “It’s cool, but it doesn’t mean as much as I think people put meaning on it. It’s just a materialistic thing that ends up controlling your life, and really, it’s like…I went out there and had fun and I challenged myself. I have some many other things to look forward to. It’s just a part of me and it’s an accomplishment. Maybe I’ll get it again, maybe I won’t. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never do this again. We’ll see.” Not exactly the fodder for a rematch. And not exactly the mindset of hungry fighter. A couple of weeks back Rory MacDonald had a similar revelation after fighting Jon Fitch to a majority draw in the welterweight grand prix. He said he’d have to reassess the situation to see if he still had it in him to keep fighting. Within 48 hours, he determined that he did. But in those 48 hours fans were left to marinate in his confession, to contemplate the hard reality that some fighters just lose their stomach for it. The 26-year-old Namajunas, who has contended all along that there is a happy life outside of fighting waiting on her once she’s financially solvent, was just confirming the fight game’s intuition. There’s more to her. Everybody who’s watched her knows that. As a young fighter, she may find it in herself to want to keep going, and that wouldn’t be surprising. Nor would it be surprising if she faces Andrade again down the line, and exacts some revenge. She was winning the fight handily up until the moment she lost, therefore giving a rematch more than enough justification to happen. Will it? It’s up to Namajunas to figure out, but if you heard how deeply she exhaled after lugging that title around for the last year, I wouldn’t bet on it.<doc-sep>
Michael Bisping describes how Jessica Andrade was able to win the women's strawweight title from Rose Namajunas. For more UFC action, sign up for ESPN+ http://plus.espn.com/ufc. (2:13) Saturday's UFC 237 card in Rio de Janeiro did not go well for the country of Brazil -- until the championship main event. Brazilian strawweight Jessica Andrade (20-6) claimed UFC's 115-pound title with a stunning knockout of Rose Namajunas at 2 minutes, 58 seconds of the second round. The finish came when Andrade lifted Namajunas (9-4) into the air and slammed her on the back of her head. The bout was quickly waved off. Namajunas recovered and exited the cage unassisted. Andrade, 27, scored just the fourth slam knockout in a title fight in UFC history and the first since Matt Hughes' dramatic slam of Carlos Newton at UFC 34. It was a massive victory for Andrade, who was fighting in her native country. Earlier in the night, the Brazilian crowd watched several of its legends lose, including Anderson Silva, Jose Aldo and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. Silva's defeat was particularly demoralizing, as he suffered a knee injury in the opening round. "I was certain of what I had to do in the second round," Andrade said. "I never did that move before in the UFC, the pile driver. That's what I do. It's my nickname." Namajunas spoke to reporters at the postfight news conference, and her manager, Brian Butler, said she would not be transported to the hospital. "She is clear-headed and being very gracious about the loss," he said. After the loss, Namajunas expressed uncertainty about her future in MMA, saying, "Going into this one, I was like, 'This might be the last time I ever do this.' But we'll see. We'll take it one day at a time." Asked if she meant she was contemplating retirement, Namajunas said, "I don't know. We'll see. I'm not gonna make no decisions right now. It's just hard to keep having fun with this."