Mackenzie Dern entered Saturday night’s UFC 224 bout against Amanda Cooper griping about all the questions she has faced about her propensity to miss weight, which had happened twice previously in her six-bout MMA career.
“When I got here, I was okay, but the people in the UFC, they were a little bit worried,” Dern told MMA Junkie earlier this week. “They called me like, ‘Are you okay?’ I said: ‘Don’t worry, you guys, it’s okay. I went and ran and everything came off, so it’s perfect.’ …
“I’m on my seventh fight now and I feel like, ‘Man, how long are they going to keep asking me about my weight?’ Every interview, even to my opponent, they ask, ‘You think she’s going to make weight?’ I said, ‘Man, they have so many things they can ask about, they can ask about my father, the fight, my opponent, so many things. They’re always going to ask me about my weight?’ ”
Those questions won’t be stopping anytime soon: On Friday in Rio de Janeiro, Dern missed weight for her strawweight fight by more than seven pounds.
Cooper made weight and the fight will go on as planned at a 123-pound catchweight, with Cooper receiving 30 percent of Dern’s purse as a penalty. She wasn’t exactly happy, however, calling her opponent a “disgrace” on Twitter:
It will be Dern’s second fight in UFC. The jujitsu grappler made weight for her first bout, a split-decision strawweight win over Ashley Yoder at UFC 222 in March, but she missed weight in two fights under the Legacy banner in October 2016 and March 2017. The fights went on as planned under a catchweight, and Dern won both.
According to MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn, Dern is the 11th UFC fighter to miss weight this year and her overage is the largest of the group, with all but one of the others coming in less than four pounds overweight. Five of those fighters ended up not competing. The other five went 5-0.
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