Mackenzie Dern will be returning to professional grappling after receiving a surprise invite to ADCC 2024, where she will compete in the new under 55kg division. Dern is actually a former ADCC world champion from back in 2015 where she won the under 60kg division, but she has since made the transition to MMA and broken into the top ten of the UFC strawweight rankings. She was one of the best female grapplers on the planet at one point though, as she also won an IBJJF World Championship and a pair of IBJJF No Gi World Championships around the same time period.
Although the news that Dern will be returning at ADCC 2024 might come as a shock to many, fans who’ve been paying attention over the past year may have been able to predict this. Dern actually announced that she wanted to return to professional grappling right at the beginning of the year and with her MMA career still ongoing, it was always going to be likely that she would focus on no gi competition. Shortly after that announcement Mackenzie Dern actually went a little further in a pre-fight press conference and openly said that she hoped to receive an invite to ADCC 2024.
With the promotion’s recent decision to increase the number of women’s weight classes, there are now 12 invites available for women and Dern is exactly the type of high-profile veteran who would be the ideal candidate for one. This is great for fans to get to see her back in action in professional grappling for the first time in 7 years, but it’s also a huge opportunity for Dern as she now has the ability to become the first woman in ADCC history to win two different regular weight classes. She’ll have to get past a series of incredibly tough opponents in order to do so though, and no doubt they’ll all be eager to get a win over a BJJ legend like Dern.
ADCC announced the news that Mackenzie Dern had been given an invite to ADCC 2024 in a recent post to their official Instagram account: