Mackenzie Dern is down to fight Joanna Jedrzejczyk next.
Dern is coming off a first-round submission win over Nina Nunes this past weekend on the main card of UFC Vegas 23. As a result, Dern made it four wins in a row and also became the newest member of the strawweight division’s top five.
Former UFC two-weight champion Daniel Cormier recently stated that he would love to see Dern test herself against Jedrzejczyk next and that’s a fight the American is interested in.
“Yeah, definitely,” Dern told LowKickMMA when asked if she’d be interested to fight the former champion. “I’m down for any of them, any of those girls, I respect all of them so much. But I’m gonna train to beat whoever they offer me. She was an ex-champ, Carla Esparza ex-champ, all the girls I think are ex-champs except Yan Xioanan.
“I think Joanna is the one who doesn’t have a fight. … We’ll see, three to four months would be good. Hopefully, I can get a fight then.”
It would certainly be a great stylistic matchup as Jedrzejczyk — who hasn’t competed since her razor-thin split decision defeat to Weili Zhang in their UFC 248 war in March last year — is yet to face a ground specialist such as Dern.
So how does Dern see the matchup playing out?
“I think it’s like striking vs. grappling but to the next level,” Dern said. “Because me and Nina, we were striker vs. grappler but me and Joanna is even the next level, you know? Obviously she’s not coming off a pregnancy and things like that.
“I think it would be good, I think it would be awesome. But I’ve seen Joanna against Carla Esparza and I know she has good takedown defense. So definitely my hands will have to be good enough to get her to respect it and I think Joanna doesn’t respect the hands of almost nobody, just Weili Zhang and Rose. Other than that, she just puts her pace forward. So I think it’ll be a great fight, it would be really crazy.”
You can watch the full interview below: