It didn’t even take four months after she gave birth for Mackenzie Dern to call the UFC and ask for another fight. They’re like, ‘Are you sure? How’s the weight? How are you feeling?’” Dern told MMAFighting.com.
“I wanted to be fighting. I came back actually pretty early and they’re like, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to wait longer?’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. Give me a fight!’”
How Mackenzie Dern Bounced Back from Pregnancy to Enter Title Conversation
It’s precisely this fighting spirit that earned Dern her BJJ black belt and made her such an exciting prospect to begin with. She was a hotly anticipated addition to the UFC roster upon her debut, strung together two wins in a row, but then announced she was pregnant.
The Mackenzie Dern hype train looked like it was slowing down. She lost 50,000 Instagram followers and a few sponsors to boot.
“I know that we have a more male-based [sport], and if you can see a hot girl fighting — and [then] all of a sudden she’s pregnant… I was already having problems with making weight before, so I guess they just left and [thought], ‘OK, she’s never going to come back to fighting.’
For me it was: I need to prove everyone wrong.”Her first professional loss came in her first fight after giving birth, but Dern managed two submission wins after that.
Unfortunately her husband and her coach fell out and she left her old gym to train with Jason Parillo, the man behind Cris Cyborg and BJ Penn, among others. For Mackenzie Dern, a lethal Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, this was a turning point.
“He’s able to put me in the mindset of how I see fighting like I saw jiu-jitsu back in my jiu-jitsu days. Just kind of putting my game and my style and being confident and opening up opportunities to take it to the ground.
I think with my past coaches, I was still blindly in the fight. Just trying to do my best at fighting. Not really how to take [anyone] down, not setting anything up, I was just in a brawl.
Now I really see better opportunities to take it to the ground and just kind of finding what my style is. I realized, OK, the better we get, the girls’ takedown defense is better, so I have my striking coach, he’s helping me get the respect I need for my striking, and that opens up the takedowns way easier than just trying to run in and get the takedown.
I realized what makes me different from the girls; it’s my jiu-jitsu, so let’s stick to that. Less injuries. It’s just going to be hard for girls to catch up to me and I really need to take advantage of that.”
The biggest test yet for Dern will come this weekend when she faces Marina Rodriguez in the main event for UFC Vegas 39. Which way do you see the fight going? Let us know in the comments.
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