Rose Namajunas: Mackenzie Dern needs to “get her s**t together”

Last weekend, on the main card of UFC 224, BJJ star Mackenzie Dern stepped into the Octagon for the second time, taking on Amanda Bobby Cooper. Dern won this fight in emphatic fashion, dropping her foe with a huge punch in the first round, then sinking in a deep rear-naked choke for the win.

Unfortunately, Dern’s win over Cooper comes with an asterisk attached, as she tipped the scales at 123 pounds, a significant seven pounds above the strawweight division’s 116-pound limit.

Speaking on the latest episode of the UFC Unfiltered podcast, UFC strawweight champion “Thug” Rose Namajunas gave her take on Dern’s failure to make weight. As you might have guessed, the champ isn’t impressed.

“That right hand she threw [that dropped Cooper] looked like it was a big ol’ girl throwing that punch,” Namajunas said of Dern’s victory (transcribed by Sherdog.com) “That was a heavy, heavy punch, and that was from a heavy girl. And not to say that that’s not her punch and that’s not a dangerous punch, but maybe that would’ve been a little bit different had she made weight or at least gave an effort to make weight.”

“I mean you didn’t even have abs, girl, like come on.”

While Namajunas was clearly unimpressed by Dern’s weigh-in blunder, she was impressed by Dern’s win otherwise, and is interested in testing her jiu jitsu against her if she can get serious about her weight cut.

“I thought, other than the weight issue, I thought she looked great,” she said. “I always wanted to test my jiu-jitsu against [someone with Dern’s ability] … that would be awesome. She’s just got to get her shit together, and maybe that might be down the road.”

Do you think Mackenzie Dern can get her weight under control and work her way to a title fight with strawweight champion Rose Namajunas?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 5/16/2018.