Due to her decorated history as a world-class Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion, Mackenzie Dern has gained quite a bit of attention since making her debut as a UFC strawweight this past March at UFC 222 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And she’s been successful thus far, picking up a split-decision victory over Ashley Yoder in her promotional debut and submitting Amanda Cooper last weekend at UFC 224 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The only problem, however, is that Dern has had issues making weight. In fact, she weighed in seven pounds over the 115-pound limit for her bout against Cooper. Because of that, it’s unclear whether or not she’ll remain in the strawweight division, but if she does, Rose Namajunas would like a shot at her:
“Other than the weight issue, I thought she looked great,” Namajunas said on a recent edition of the “UFC Unfiltered” podcast. “That is something, I’ve always wanted to test my jiu-jitsu against, that would be awesome, I would like to face her. But, she just has to get her shit together and that may be down the road.
“She beat Gabi Garcia in a jiu-jitsu match, so that would be awesome. And she can obviously strike a little bit. She has that heavy first step, that a wrestler has sometimes that good right hand. You can tell she has that style developing. So it will be interesting to see if she can fix her issues and maybe she can be a future contender.”
Namajunas, the reigning strawweight champion, is coming off of back-to-back victories over ex-titleholder Joanna Jedrzejczyk, but her next fight has yet to be set. Dern is likely a few fights and a few issues to fix away from earning a title shot, but the match-up could be an intriguing one down the road.
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