“I arrived at 139 pounds and a half and then on Wednesday, I was 131.4.
Not that it’s typical, you know but I would like to get at the week of the fight at like 120. There’s no like typical [weight I arrive at]. Honestly, when I got there on Tuesday I wasn’t scared yet, I wasn’t nervous or anything. I felt like I was on the plane and everything and I was drinking so… On Tuesday when I arrived, I felt like, ‘oh man, it’s my last day but for me it was possible’.
I didn’t use a nutritionist. I have friends in Brazil and we got one nutritionist that I know and I talked with him as soon as I arrived in Brazil and I started to ask him like, ‘this is the weight here, here. This is where I’m at, this is where I’m going, what hotel, what sauna, wet sauna not a dry sauna’. All these things. I let him know everything I ate. And we worked like the week of the fight. But it’s kind of hard, you know.
He wasn’t someone I was working with for 6-8 weeks, he was someone that’s a nutritionist that I know and he tried to help me in Vegas too [for my fight at UFC 222].”
The biggest buzz during UFC 224’s fight week came at the weigh-ins. Which as history has shown is never a good thing. And it wasn’t this time either.
Highly touted undefeated strawweight prospect, Mackenzie Dern was set to make her sophomore appearance in the UFC but when going to weigh in weighed seven pounds over the 115-pound strawweight limit. Fortunately for Dern, her opponent, Amanda Cooper still took the fight.
This isn’t the first time Dern missed weight for one of her fights. Including this weight miss, she’s missed weight for three of her seven career bouts and all times were by two or more pounds with each miss being more than the last(118.8, 120 and 123). Not a great trend.
In hindsight, it wasn’t the best choice by Cooper who ended up getting submitted in the very first round after being dropped with a big shot on the feet.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 5/14/2018.
