Mackenzie Dern won her first title defense at UFC 330 in Philadelphia, earning a one-sided if not particularly entertaining decision over fellow jiu jitsu expert Gillian Robertson in the co-main event.
Robertson came into the fight with the women’s record for most submissions in the UFC but Dern was the one who came closest to earning a tap, catching Robertson in a tight rear naked choke that was spoiled by the end of the first round. The IBJJF and ADCC champ got a lot of ground time over the remaining 20 minutes of the fight to work her grappling but never came close to another finish. While a win is a win, the lack of a submission clearly bothered her.
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“It feels good, but it could feel even better if I would’ve got the submission,” Dern said at the UFC 330 post-fight press conference. “I’m someone that I’m always looking for the best performance possible. So I’m happy with my wrestling. I’m happy with, I guess, the dominance of the fight. But I wanted to submit Gillian for sure. And I still see lots of things that I wanna get better just to be able to defend [the belt] more times. But definitely, I feel like I solidified myself as a champ.”
There’s those who say you aren’t really a champ until you’ve defended the belt. Dern’s done that, but now she has another, bigger hurdle to cross: those who don’t consider her the legitimate women’s strawweight champ until she faces former belt holder Weili Zhang.
Asked if she felt like she had to defeat Zhang to truly be undisputed, Dern said no.
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“I felt like the champion before, when I won the belt,” Dern said. “But I just think I solidified myself even more as a champ for the fans, that they would say that. But I don’t think I need to to win [against] Weili to be a champ. I mean, people retire. Not that I’m not saying that’s what she’s gonna do, but the more defenses I can get of this, whoever comes next, I think I think I proved that I was a champ.”
“I mean, Gillian was on a five fight win streak, Virna [Jandiroba] was on a five fight win streak. I just became a four fight win streak. So it’s like, I don’t know how much more I need to do to prove that.”
She also shrugged off any perceived need for Zhang to be her next opponent.
“I mean, I don’t hope for anybody, you know what I mean?” she said. “Whoever the UFC gives to me, I’ll be ready.”
“I would ideally like to fight like probably March, so like maybe in six months,” she said of her next fight. “If I can get maybe two fights a year, that would be good. But after I won the belt, my life changed completely. There was all these obligations. There was just so many things I had to do. Now that I’m defending it, I’m kinda getting in the rhythm of it, being a champion.”
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“My plan is just to get back to training. And the media tour and all these things that we have to do, but get back to training.”
“We were just in the locker room right now going over what positions I could have done better, the things I was missing, what we did right, what will come, what we will work on for the next one,” Dern said. “So me and my team, we’re on top of that, and we’re just constantly trying to get better. I definitely think that I could’ve finished this fight for sure. It wasn’t a big mistake. It was little, little details, but there are things that I’m gonna definitely change for sure.”
