UFC 321<\/a> co-main event Saturday, Dern (16-5 MMA, 11-5 UFC) defeated Virna Jandiroba by unanimous decision (48-47, 48-47, 49-46) to claim ownership to the vacant 115-pound title. The bout took place at Etihad Arena on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
The fight was closely-contested for the entirety of 25 minutes with some razor-thin rounds. Jandiroba (22-4 MMA, 8-4 UFC) was unafraid to test her skills and venture into the guard of the skilled Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner.<\/p>\n
Dern meanwhile worked well off her back, always active and throwing punches. Jandiroba found success with ground-and-pound. The later rounds were particularly close.<\/p>\n
When the fight concluded each fighter was swollen, lifted up by their corners in a potential last-ditch effort to improve optics and sway any judge that’s pen may have been hovering uncertain above their scorecard.<\/p>\n
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Ultimately, it was Dern who swept the scorecards, thus marking a happy climax in a long-spotlighted career since she transitioned to MMA.<\/p>\n
Dern made her UFC debut in 2018 and experienced a variety of ups and downs. After a 1-3 stretch, Dern won back-to-back fights to earn her first crack at UFC gold with Zhang Weili vacating after moving to flyweight.<\/p>\n
Jandiroba comes ip short in her first UFC title fight. A blue-collar, five-fight winning streak is snapped.<\/p>\n
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This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC 321 results: New strawweight champion crowned<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a new UFC strawweight champion and her name is Mackenzie Dern. In the UFC 321 co-main…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,81327,785,85,787,9222,81328],"class_list":{"0":"post-240610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mackenzie-dern","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-unanimous-decision","16":"tag-virna-jandiroba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}