Mackenzie Dern missed weight by seven pounds for her bout against Amanda Cooper at UFC 224, a miss that caused the fighter to be fined 30% of her fight purse.
The Brazilian won the bout via first round submission and got a win bonus as a result, but 15% of that also went to the defeated Cooper.
“I’m not surprised. She got 30 percent of the purse, which was my penalty — usually it’s only 20 percent, but because I was so much heavier it went up to 30 percent,” Dern said on The MMA Hour. “I think she was confident in the fight. I think she thought she was going to win and everything. If I was confident and I was getting 30 percent and we were giving her an extra 15 percent too — if I won I would give her 15 percent of the bonus extra too — I would have accepted the fight too. I was hoping she would. I was really grateful she accepted the fight,”
After all the craziness surrounding the missed weight at UFC 224, one thing Dern is promising is that she won’t be missing weight anymore.
“I want to stay at strawweight. Hopefully, with the help of UFC Performance Institute it will be a lot easier and it will all be under control. If they told me, ‘It’s not good for you to fight at 115’, then I would go to 125. I’ve made 115 before, three times, so I think it’s a better weight for me. I can guarantee [that I won’t miss weight again],” she said.
Dern did get rewarded by the UFC for winning at UFC 224 while overweight because she was placed in the strawweight division top rankings, sitting at #15.
