So what's next for UFC 212 winner Claudia Gadelha? Well, it's complicated

RIO DE JANEIRO – After making quick work of Karolina Kowalkiewicz to earn a second straight UFC win, Claudia Gadelha has certainly reinserted herself in the title conversation.

But one person who is not pushing for a title shot just yet is Gadelha herself. It’s not that she doesn’t think she’s capable of beating strawweight titleholder Joanna Jedrzejczyk. But after losing to the undefeated champ twice – the first a controversial split call and the second a failed five-round title bid – Gadelha said there’s still some convincing to be done when it comes to a trilogy fight.

“I think this fight has no appeal,” Gadelha admitted after Saturday’s UFC 212 pay-per-view co-headliner at Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro. “Joanna and I fought twice and, on paper, my defeats are there. I don’t like fights like these. I want fights that the fans, the UFC, the execs, they all want to watch. I’m sure if the UFC gives me a title shot now, people are going to say, ‘Oh, she lost twice.’

“I don’t want that to happen. I want to prepare myself, and I want to show that it’s my challenge to show that I am able to fight Joanna again. I want everybody to come up to me and say, ‘Now Claudia is capable of beating Joanna.’ And that’s why I’m working on the flaws I think that I had when I fought her the first and second time.”

With the first-round submission of Kowalkiewicz (10-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC), who’d last been seen hanging tough with Jedrzejzcyk (14-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) for five rounds, Gadelha (15-2 MMA, 4-2 UFC) is in a peculiar position. While she does have a point in the fact she just lost to the champ less than one year ago, Gadelha has proven herself a worthy contender with dominant back-to-back wins.

So, if not Jedrzejzcyk, who’s next? If it’s up to her, Gadelha, who’s No. 2 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA women’s strawweight rankings (one sport behind champ), is ready to take on “anybody.” But, given the circumstances, she doesn’t think her colleagues are as excited about facing her.

“I’m in a little bit of a complicated situation in the division,” Gadelha said. “I’m the No. 1 in the (UFC’s) ranking, but I fought the champion twice. Everybody is going to want to bypass me to fight Joanna. Like Rose (Namajunas). She said she doesn’t want to fight me; she wants to fight Joanna. Before she’d said, ‘Claudia, not now. I’m going to fight Michelle (Waterson). It’s two pretty girls. We’re going to have a cool fight.’ Cool, so she fought Michelle, and maybe she’ll fight for the title. Let her bypass me and fight for the title. Let others who don’t want to fight me bypass and fight for the title because I’ll be preparing to fight Joanna, and I’ll be prepared to fight Joanna. I’m sure of that.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen because it’s going to be hard for someone to say yes. Like I said, they’ll want to go around me to fight for the belt – which I would want too. I don’t think that’s wrong. But I’ll talk to (UFC matchmaker) Sean Shelby, to (UFC President) Dana White, to see who’s next. But I want to fight soon. I’m ready to fight again.”

Gadelha has made no secret of how much healthier and better she’s felt since moving her camp to the U.S. And if she does get that fight with No. 1 Jedrzejzcyk, she has very little doubt as to who’s the better fighter.

“I have better MMA techniques,” Gadelha said. “I’m not a better striker than Joanna, but I’m a better MMA fighter than Joanna. I trained wrongly to fight her. I killed myself. I did a 17-week camp, killing my body. I (was) destroyed. I couldn’t even stand up anymore because I was killing my body.

“I have all the tools to beat her. I needed to do what I did, to reinvent myself, to get better and find what was missing in my game, which were my cardio, my patience, not letting adrenaline get too high and not kill my body. I found myself.”

For more on UFC 212, check out the UFC Events section of the site.