Mackenzie Dern might be the UFC strawweight world champion right now but there’s another woman who looms pretty large over the division, former champion Zhang Weili. It’s only natural in a situation like this of course, because Weili didn’t actually lose the belt in the cage. She had two separate title-reigns and the most recent lasted almost 3 years, before she vacated the belt in order to move up in weight and challenge the flyweight champion; Valentine Shevchenko. While Weili was preparing for that fight, Dern defeated Virna Jandiro a by decision to claim the vacant belt.
Now Weili will be choosing between working towards another title-shot at flyweight or moving back to strawweight to win back her belt. When Dern was asked about the prospect of potentially fighting her, she raised the point that there is a third option that Weili might be considering too:
“I don’t feel like I need to, but I feel like the fans really want to see it, you know what I mean? If she wanted to retire today, she could because she’s accomplished so much.”
It was only a few months ago just before her title-fight that Dern openly said she wouldn’t be ready to fight Weili, but she also floated a potential June date provided she won the belt. Now that she has the title around her waist and has no opponent booked for her first defense, it seems like everything is lining up perfectly for this fight to get booked. Even though Dern doesn’t feel like she needs to take it, she still sees the value in getting a win over Weili if she can:
“So I don’t put that pressure on myself that I need to fight her, but it would definitely be very fulfilling to beat her and kind of solidify to anyone that had a doubt that I’m the real champion and I just didn’t get it easy.”
The full interview with Mackenzie Dern where she talks about facing Zhang Weili was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAJunkie:
