The UFC won’t force the jiu jitsu ace to move up a division after her massive weigh-in flub in Rio.
There’s no doubt that the UFC is eying Mackenzie Dern as a potential successor to Ronda Rousey, the kind of fighter with mainstream appeal that could really move the needle for them. Unfortunately, there’s a couple of concerns when it comes to the jiu jitsu world champion.
Dern was mysteriously asked to leave the MMA Lab in Arizona shortly before her last fight because she wasn’t able to commit to training there enough. And then there’s the issue of her missing weight. She’s missed weight 3 times out of 7 fights, the last by a whopping 7 pounds. For a while it sounded like the UFC was going to force Mackenzie up a weight class after that flub, but now she’ll be doing her next cut with the help of the promotion’s Performance Institute.
”After I did not hit the weight, the UFC called me,” Dern told Globo’s Combate website (translated from Portuguese). “They said they were thinking of moving me up, they called me to come to the Performance Institute in Las Vegas to see what my body type was like, if it was better continue at strawweight or move up to flyweight. Having this network is so great, seeing them invest time in me and helping me, I had no way of saying no. I’m here getting their help on everything.”
”Everyone here agrees I have a body type that fits at strawweight, in the category that I am, so the plan is to continue in it,” she said. “But we want to diet and train so that I do not have to cut so much weight, I’ll cut very little. After the fight, I will not go up that much. Regardless of what will be decided on the weigh-in, whether or not it will return for the afternoon, it will not change my situation much, because, the way they want me to be the best possible athlete, it will be a very quiet thing.”
Dern wasn’t shy to admit she messed up, or to list the numerous ways things fell apart for her leading into her UFC 224 weigh-in disaster.
”Fighting twice in a short time period was one of the factors, but there really were a lot of things,” Dern said. “I’m learning here every day, every day I learn something different from my body that I did not even know, things that get in the way of my cut, that I had difficulty due to the way I cut. Now that I’m working with the UFC, I’m going to come back here every four weeks, take the tests to see how my body is reacting. But otherwise my workout will continue normal.”
As for her next fight, Mackenzie is once again calling to be put on an event, and this time she wants on the UFC 230 card in New York City on Nevember 3rd.
”I wanted to fight in New York, I have no idea of ??an opponent, incidentally, so you want to make a suggestion?”
Whoever it ends up being, beating the scale will be her first big test.