LAS VEGAS — The first thing you notice about Joanna Jedrzejczyk is her name, of course, because you have to figure out how to spell it. She is a writer's worst nightmare. She is the reason copy and paste was invented.
But you also have to figure out how to say it, and, well, that's even more difficult.
"Young. Jay. Chick," she says, slowly.
I blink at her. My brain has absolutely no idea what sound she is making.
"Young. Jay. Chiiiiick," she says even more slowly, as though drawing out the last portion will help me understand. It does not. I am forever lost when it comes to saying her name, but at least I know how to press CTRL-V on the keyboard.
It is the Friday before Jedrzejczyk will face Carla Esparza for the UFC women's strawweight championship in Dallas. She is here in Las Vegas, far from her home in Poland, to complete the kind of media obligations that go along with being a title challenger, even in a new division like hers.
A morning round of phone interviews went off without a hitch, and now she is on the mat at Robert Drysdale's gym on Rainbow, clad from head to toe in spandex and attempting to teach those of us gathered around her how to pronounce her name.
The UFC will run its first event in Poland next month. It is an emerging market for combat sports. Jedrzeczyk wasn't even supposed to be here, preparing to challenge for the championship, because Claudia Gadelha was supposed to be here.
Gadelha was the one who didn't go in The Ultimate Fighter house with the other strawweights because she was too big to cut weight that many times in six weeks. Gadelha was the one we all crowned the champion in waiting.
And then Jedrzejczyk went out and beat Gadelha handily, ruining whatever grand plans the Brazilian was already formulating in her head. And now Jedrzejczyk is intent on ruining Esparza's championship reign before it's even really started.
The idea of becoming the first Polish UFC champion means something to her, too.
"They thought it was going to be some huge guy," she says with a laugh. "They did not know it was going to be a girl."
Confidence.
Jedrzeczyk is happy, all smiles and boundless energy. Her fingernails are painted, but they are the lone hint that she is anything but a finely tuned athletic machine. Her feet and hands are hardened from years of top-level muay thai training. She is easily imagined in one of those 1980s martial-arts film training montages, out in an icy jungle somewhere, kicking the crap out of a tree until the tree bends to her will.
Over the course of the next hour, Jedrzejczyk will go through an intense training session on the Drysdale mats. This is not par for the course. Not for a media engagement, anyway. But Jedrzejczyk intends on using her time wisely, and so she spars and works on her footwork, but mostly she works on her sprawl.
Because she is facing Esparza, she says, it is not a secret what kind of game plan she'll have. She doesn't even mind the video crews here filming her workout. Nothing is off limits. She has no secrets, because what she must do is obvious.
"She is a good wrestler. Everybody knows this," Jedrzejczyk says. "Everyone is talking about it. But I do not care. We are going to play my game."
And so she sprawls, relentlessly, blocking takedown attempt after takedown attempt. At some point she has stopped smiling, and her face looks more like it does when she faces off with her opponents at weigh-ins.
She leans down, staring up at her opponent, and the look on her face is something other than human. She did this against Gadelha, putting her forehead out and pushing the Brazilian fighter away, while matchmaker Joe Silva had visions of a tinier version of a Dave Sholler-esque shove dancing through his head.
"I am tough in my head," she says. "I want to show them it is going to be a tough fight."
She is in Las Vegas until Wednesday morning, when she'll board a flight and head to Dallas. The only thing she knows of Texas is that they have "big steaks," and she plans on celebrating next week with a big Dallas, Texas steak. She'll also consume massive amounts of candy, because she is a junkie when it comes to sweets.
But mostly, she says, she will relish being champion. After next Saturday, the world won't have to worry about pronouncing or spelling her last name. She has a solution.
"After next Saturday, you can call me Joanna Champion," she says.
Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report.
