Mackenzie Dern has been a ferocious competitor for almost her entire life but that doesn’t mean she makes things personal with all of her opponents.
From a multitude of grappling titles to her current reign as UFC strawweight champion, Dern has never backed down from a challenge but she’s also never really engaged much in trash talk. That’s why she was confused to hear her next opponent Gillian Robertson claim that she didn’t like her very much ahead of their fight at UFC 330.
While there has been a little bit of back-and-forth between the fighters, Dern doesn’t actually have anything against Robertson other than the Canadian strawweight trying to take her belt on Saturday.
“It’s funny that people say that because I felt like she was the one who was [trying to build the tension],” Dern told MMA Fighting on Tuesday. “She’s kind of been talking about submissions and why are people talking about me when she has the most submissions on Joe Rogan’s podcast and things like that, at least clips from what I’ve seen. I didn’t know who she was.
“I don’t have anything against her but I guess we do have some competitiveness right now besides the fact that we’re going to be punching each other in the face. We’ve kind of been talking back and forth about who has better submissions and this and that. Who has better grappling in MMA? I’m not someone to put someone down to make myself go up. I definitely took that from her end. I have nothing against her. I’ve never even met her.”
Perhaps Robertson is ratcheting up the animosity in hopes of using that against Dern come fight night but that remains to be seen.
For her part, Dern isn’t holding anything against Robertson and she’s just excited to finally get the chance to defend her title after finally becoming UFC champion this past year.
Dern was more than happy to face Robertson in her first title defense when that was the matchup the UFC offered her after rumors swirled for months that former champion Zhang Weili would eventually return to the 115-pound division.
“I like the matchup just the fact that she’s a jiu-jitsu girl,” Dern said about Robertson. “I also like the fact that she’s coming off a five-fight win streak. When I fought Virna [Jandiroba], she was also on a four or five fight win streak.
“I like fighting people who are on win streaks. I like trying to stop their win streak. That’s always a good, fun challenge for me. Her being a grappler, I was like OK, this is good.”
