Mackenzie Dern enters her first title defense at UFC 330 against an opponent who could be more than willing to test her decorated ground game.<\/p>\n
Long before becoming UFC strawweight champion, Dern put together an illustrious competitive Brazilian jiu-jitsu career, winning numerous championships across the globe including gold medals at ADCC and the World IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu Championship. Her grappling skills have translated well to her MMA career, with half of her wins coming by way of submission and many opponents struggling to deal with her on the ground.<\/p>\n
However, on Saturday, Dern faces Gillian Robertson, who just so happens to own the record for most submissions (7) by any female fighter ever to compete in the UFC. Robertson did much of her damage at flyweight, but is 5-0 since dropping down to 115 pounds and has spoken confidently about testing Dern\u2019s highly vaunted jiu-jitsu.<\/p>\n
So what does Dern think of the potential grappling challenge?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s five minutes,\u201d Dern said at UFC 330 media day on Wednesday. \u201cEach round is only five minutes. Five minutes isn\u2019t a lot of time to work, especially when she\u2019s good and she knows what she\u2019s doing. I don\u2019t know what belt she is, but if she\u2019s a black belt\u2014well, there\u2019s other girls that are black belts, too, Virna [Jandiroba] and stuff like that\u2014so she\u2019s someone who\u2019s aggressive and goes forward and she looks for the attack. I think she\u2019s going to try to progress in the fight. She\u2019s not going to just get a takedown and just stay safe. I think she\u2019ll try to catch your back and she\u2019s not someone who I want to fall in a bad position with. So if she knows how to stay safe and I know how to stay safe and we both know how to attack and we only have two minutes left because it took two-and-a-half minutes just to the ground because they\u2019re still punching in the cage and all this, it\u2019s an MMA fight, I don\u2019t think people could see that much, especially when I\u2019ve seen some of her submissions now with the UFC posting this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cArmbar, she attacks from the bottom, she attacks from the top. An armbar is an armbar, but you still have titles and you still have the accolades that the person brings to the fight and she hasn\u2019t been submitted. She was armbarred, I know some of her fights in jiu-jitsu, she got leglocked. There are definitely weaknesses or holes there. I haven\u2019t been submitted or things like that. So I don\u2019t think in this fight you\u2019ll see like, \u2018Oh wow, I\u2019m doing something totally crazy that she doesn\u2019t do.\u2019 But I just have some tricks up my sleeve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dern is referring to Robertson\u2019s competitive grappling career, where she has seen mixed results. Robertson scored an impressive submission of two-time UFC champion Rose Namajunas at a Fury Pro Grappling event in 2022, but has also been made to tap four times on the mats.<\/p>\n
Should Saturday\u2019s co-main event feature prolonged ground exchanges, Dern is excited about the prospect of showing off her specialty.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor sure, levels to this, but it\u2019s just I don\u2019t know if she\u2019s fought someone who doesn\u2019t want to go to the ground with her, you know?\u201d Dern said. \u201cSo we\u2019re definitely going to be engaging, because I think there will be scrambles and there will be grappling exchanges and I\u2019m super excited about that because this whole camp I trained so much my jiu-jitsu and it was just really comforting to be back kind of [like] if I was going to go fight at the world championship like I used to 15 years ago. I think it will be fun and it will be a good fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Dern\u2019s championship win over Jandiroba at UFC 321, the 33-year-old mixed the martial arts to earn a unanimous decision over Virna Jandiroba, a fellow grappler. Dern is proud to show that she\u2019s become a more well-rounded fighter, even if jiu-jitsu will always be in her heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely me winning was one of the biggest representations and kind of give back that I could do for my sport, my martial art, for jiu-jitsu, and my community,\u201d Dern said. \u201cIt\u2019s really good to be able to solidify myself as an MMA fighter because I feel like I won the fight, my title, mostly with my striking.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, my jiu-jitsu is what makes people scared and that gives me such a good hand in the fight. People kind of back off in how they fight me and they fight differently, so that obviously is a big reason of what got me here, but just feeling comfortable with the striking and being able to adapt with whatever they throw at me. I became a champion in a completely different sport now, so I definitely represent jiu-jitsu, but I think that\u2019s separated now and I\u2019m a champion in MMA.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mackenzie Dern enters her first title defense at UFC 330 against an opponent who could be more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-856668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856668","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=856668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}