Mackenzie Dern is just days away from her rematch with Amanda Ribas at UFC Vegas 101 on January 11th, 2025, so she decided to reflect on the loss that shes looking to avenge. It’s a fight that has been over 5 years in the making, as the pair first met all the way back in 2019 when they were both in the early days of their respective MMA careers. Ribas had only been a professional fighter for 5 years and had a 7-1 record at the time, while Dern was only 3 years removed her debut and held a 7-0 record before they stepped into the cage to face one another.
They’ve had remarkably similar experiences since that first fight too, as Dern currently sits at 14-5 and Ribas has a 13-5 professional record. Both Mackenzie Dern and Amanda Ribas are ranked in the top 10 of the UFC strawweight division too, and the winner of this rematch will likely break into the top 5 afterward. Although the first fight didn’t go Dern’s way, a lot has changed since then and theres one huge element that is no longer a factor. At the time of their first fight, Dern has given birth just 4 months prior and rushed to get back in to the cage. Given that she lost the fight, one of the key questions she was asked was whether or not she regretted that decision:
“Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I think I still would have losses in my career, and, you know, I’m still happy to where I’m at today. I think that’s what made me be who I am today. So, I can’t totally regret it, but for me, I think if I could go back again, I would have waited a little bit longer… And nowadays, I understand with just two consecutive wins, you’d be in line for a title. That’s the goal, to be a champion, and maybe I would have kept being undefeated, like Tatiana Suarez.”
Dern also went a little further into the reason she made that decision in the first place:
“So, I feel like my career took a different turn with my decision. I went back and watched the fight and I thought I did pretty good, for everything that I had gone through… But, yeah, I think I was scared of the ring rust, you know, at that time. And I wasn’t even, like, a real MMA fighter. I didn’t even know what the ring rust was… I said, ‘No, I don’t want out longer. I was already out for one year basically and the fans were saying I’ll never come back. And in my last fight, I had just missed weight. I was on a roll and I wanted to show that, just because I had a baby, I’ll be back in and everything like that… So, yeah, definitely, wish I would have had the composure to think, like, no, take it slower. Take a little bit more time. You know, four months is fast.”
The full UFC Vegas 101 media day where Mackenzie Dern discusses her first loss to Amanda Ribas before their rematch was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAJunkie:
