Mackenzie Dern is in a notorious mood given her newly acquired record of going 3-0 in mma. Over the weekend Dern got the chance to try her hand at striking and sparred over 3 rounds with opponent Katherine Roy over at Legacy Fighting Alliance.
“I’ll try to follow (Conor) McGregor’s footsteps,” Dern told MMA Fighting on Monday. “The best in the world always have goals to achieve.”
Dern added:
“I think that if the UFC has a 125-pound division, I’d like to fight in that division too, see if I feel good there,” Dern said. “But I think that my height is for 115. But I need to get used to keeping my weight closer to 115. My body is different than the other strawweights.”
Much fuss was made prior to the fight due to Dern’s inability to make 115 lbs happen so the fight was changed to a catchweight of 120.
One way or another Dern has written her name in many of the grappling books very young:
“I never wanted to be just another one in jiu-jitsu,” Dern said. “Maybe there is someone in jiu-jitsu with more titles than me, but I try to be someone with a different style. I want to be remembered. We stop competing one day and all this hard work can’t be forgotten. I’m not saying that being the champion is easy, it’s actually pretty hard, but I want to be remembered and become a Hall of Famer in MMA as well.”
Naturally she also has some other goals, such as to not be in MMA for very long:
“If I can win two belts by 27, I’ll stop (fighting) earlier,” she continued. “I want to win the belt and defend it, but I wanna know the right time to stop fighting. The best in the world always set new goals, but we never know when is the right time to stop. We always want more. I wanna know when it’s time to stop. I’m really comfortable with my decision to go from jiu-jitsu to MMA now, and I hope to do the same in MMA as well.”
