UFC 273: Mackenzie Dern says getting punched in the face showed she belonged in the UFC

UFC strawweight star Mackenzie Dern says the positives to come out of her last loss were the punches she took to the face. Dern (11-2) laughs about the experience now, but she is serious at the same time. Though her MMA career stretches back six years, Dern had never really taken punches on – in numbers – before she faced Brazilian Marina Rodriguez. “But now I know I can take it,” explains the 29-year-old American. “And she couldn’t knock me out.” Losing to the third-ranked Rodriguez (16-1-2) back in October, via a unanimous decision that was never really in doubt – brought to a halt Dern’s charge towards a strawweight title shot. But Dern believes she walked away from the experience knowing far more about herself, as a fighter, and about what she has ahead of her if she is ever to make that belt her own. “What I took away was the experience of 25 minutes of actual, 100 per cent fighting,” Dern says. “We film all my sparring and everything like that, but there’s nothing like the actual fight and now we have 25 minutes of that on tape. We have me experiencing a lot of striking. “I think the positive was for me to have my five rounds, to go through everything she threw at me. Marina is such an experienced fighter, she has a lot of strategy behind her. And I’ve looked at that, and I’ve learned.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mackenzie Dern 🇺🇸🇧🇷 (@mackenziedern) Dern returns to the cage this weekend on the blockbuster main card at UFC 273 out of Jacksonville, Florida. She’s up against seventh-ranked American Tecia Torres (13-5) and Dern is looking to right the wrongs of that fight with Rodriguez, the fighter who is now the likely favourite to get next crack at the strawweight title, once incumbent Rose Namajunas (11-4) and fellow American Carla Esparza (18-6) settle their business at UFC 274 on May 7. Pre- Rodriguez found Dern on a 4-0 tear and making good on the buzz that had been building around her rise through the strawweight ranks. But as arguably the most accomplished Brazilian jiu-jitsu exponent to ever fight in the UFC – with 22 gold medals from world and regional championships on her shelf – things were always, eventually, going to come down to how Dern could handle being hit. Strawweight Showdown!😤 🌪️@TeciaTorres and 🥋@MackenzieDern aim to secure their stake in the division! 📱📺💻 #UFC273: 𝐕𝐎𝐋𝐊𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐒𝐊𝐈 𝐯𝐬 𝐊𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐙𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐈𝐄 | APR 10 pic.twitter.com/A7Sn9iyEoJ — UFC_Asia (@UFC_Asia) April 1, 2022 That’s how Rodriguez came at her, too. Swinging. But Dern says there was more going on in that fight. More lessons. More learning. “I thought we were pretty even, but she just built her momentum,” Dern says. “She had her strategy, to come with numbers [of strikes] and close the fight out. And that little piece of momentum can sometimes make such a difference. That’s a huge thing to experience in terms of taking my career forward.” The first thing Dern did after her loss was disappear, taking her husband and young daughter off to the beaches of Hawaii for a weekend, switching off social media, and resting and thinking. Then she returned to California’s RVCA Training Centre and she got back to work. “I vanished,” Dern laughed. “No one could find us. But I’m a perfectionist and I wanted to get back in there and work on my mistakes as soon as I could, to just look at what went wrong and continue to become a better fighter.” Now comes the 32-year-old Torres and a fighter who stood toe-to-toe with no less a line-up than former strawweight champs Zhang Weili, Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Jessica Andrade. Torres took her own lessons from those fights, before bouncing back with a 3-0 run. “Tecia has her strategy,” Dern says. “She’s been kind of overwhelming the girls, just pressing, pressing. She’s really living up to her nickname, ‘The Tiny Tornado’. I feel like her pressure now, since that run of losses, has gone to a totally different level. She’s definitely on a run and I’m excited that I have to face that and find a way to beat it, maybe face those strikes, throw some of my own, and get her down to the ground.” There’s a sense of occasion about the bout, given where both fighters hope victory might lead, and buzz that has built around the title fights at the top of the UFC 273 card, that’s not been lost on Dern. “It’s gonna be a great fight on a great card,” she says. “There’s a lot of tough, tough people on the card, and two title fights. For me I’ve done my past five fights without any crowds. It was good. It was fun while it lasted, being in there with just you and your coaches. But I’m ready for the crowds back, you know, and for little moments where you need to show heart and the crowd really brings that out of you.”