Headed into her second UFC bout, rising women’s MMA star Mackenzie Dern has announced she has changed teams.
The UFC women’s 115-pound prospect revealed at a media day luncheon via MMAFighting.com that she had been asked to leave The MMA Lab in her home state of Arizona following her UFC debut win over Ashley Yoder at March’s UFC 222.
According to Dern, it was her consistency (or lack thereof) that made team head coach John Crouch ask her to move:
“In relation with the Lab, after my last fight, Coach [John] Crouch, he just invited me to leave the team,” Dern said. “I think really we don’t have a 100-percent understanding. I think he knows his decisions more than me. I think with just the consistency, he wanted me to be there more often than what I was, but everything happens for a reason.”
Hyped as one of the best rising talents in the UFC, Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion Dern revealed she was getting ready for her fight versus Amanda Bobby Cooper at May’s UFC 224 at Blackhouse in L.A., where she refines her much-needed striking game, and with Checkmat and Leo Vieira for jiu-jitsu, the overtly dominant aspect of her game.
Dern stated that although it wasn’t a permanent fit for now, she was enjoying her time training in California right now:
“It’s nothing 100 percent or anything like that, but for this camp I’ve been working with them and I’m feeling so good,”
Crouch also addressed the scenario in his own statement, fixating on Dern’s aforementioned inconsistency with training while offering his belief she’d be better off centering her camp in California. Overall, he wished her the best in her fight career:
“She was struggling to make it back and forth to Arizona, and I thought it was better that she just set up her camp in California, where she really enjoys being. I wish her the best. I know she’s going to do great in her jiu-jitsu career and in her MMA career, and we’ll be cheering for her.”
Dern then addressed that herself, offering her mindset in California and why it works for her in a similar fashion as Brazil, where heritage stems from. She may have been born in Arizona and begun her career at The MMA Lab, but wasn’t willing to give up her life outside of fighting to be in the gym every day without fail:
“I think, like I said, the mindset and being confident, if you’re happy, too, with where you are, it’s the best,” Dern said. “Here is a little bit similar lifestyle that I have in Brazil. I almost went back to Brazil to live there. I was even training with Jose Aldo down there and everything and seeing if I would be there. So, I have this lifestyle here in California, which gives me that good balance.
“I’m not just training,” Dern said. “I’m not the person that the next day I’m back in the academy. I like to be able to be on the beach and relax and miss to be on the mats and want to be on the mats. I don’t like to feel the pressure to be on the mats. I’m on the mats since I’m 3 years old. For me, at 25, when I have the time to rest and everything, then the next time, it’s like man I want to train. I like to have that drive.”
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