This article is part of our ADCC 2024 coverage. To get live results, play by play, and commentary, we’ll have a live updates article running all weekend.
Mackenzie Dern was taking part in a press conference ahead of her fight at UFC 298 and announced publicly that she wants to be invited to ADCC 2024. The promotion is known for giving out surprise invites for each edition and Dern is exactly the kind of competitor who would attract a lot of attention, while also being a legitimate threat in the division. She’s a former ADCC world champion from back in 2015 and she won also an IBJJF World Championship in the same year, solidifying her place at the top of the sport.
This isn’t the first time that Dern has expressed her desire to return to professional grappling either, so it seems like she’s serious about going back to her first combat sport. She hasn’t taking a single match since her last appearance at ADCC in 2017, which was only shortly after she decided to make the transition to MMA. Since focusing on MMA she has gone on to have a successful UFC career and currently holds a 13-4 professional record, ranked in the top 10 of the strawweight division. For Dern, the biggest goal of her career is still a UFC world championship:
“I would like to get the belt. I really believe even though I’m coming off a loss, I feel like I’m closer to the belt now, just off where I’m at in my life and how much I can dedicate to training and focus on this and prepare for it. So, definitely the belt.”
The loss Dern is referring to came against Jessica Andrade at UFC 295, where she suffered a TKO for the very first time in her MMA career. Although that fight was only at the end of 2023, she’s already eager to rebound from that experience and she accepted a short-notice fight against Amanda Lemos at UFC 298 to further that goal. Mackenzie Dern says that a UFC title isn’t her only priority though, and she has one eye on ADCC 2024 as well:
“And also to just I mean… really working on stamping, like who I am in the fighting world, you know, the fight industry. I would like to make an appearance at the ADCC at the end of the year, come back and going to the ADCC, and that’s a competition that I won as a… I’m a former champion. So it has a very special place in my heart.”
Everything ties in together for Mackenzie Dern though, and ADCC 2024 is another step in what has been a very impressive combat sports career. She explained that she’s already started thinking about her legacy, and the impact she wants to make with it:
“I wanna be known and remembered. I feel like everything that we put on the line, and all this hard work we go through, we would want to be. I’ve been going to a lot of the events and I’ve been seeing Frankie Edgar, DC (Daniel Cormer), some of the people kinda getting into the Hall of Fame. That’s where I want to be. In the end of course my number one goal is to be the champion but when I start seeing the stories and kinda the older generation getting to the Hall of Fame and retiring, and all these things, you start thinking about the long term and where you wanna be and remembered as a fighter.”
The full interview with Mackenzie Dern where she announces her intention to return to professional grappling at ADCC 2024 was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAJunkie:
