Hey everyone. It's been awhile since I posted. I had midterms last week so I got pretty busy and then needed a weekend to recover. I watched all of the fights in real time and now that I am on my normal schedule again, I should be back to being active. I know this fight is well out of the news cycle, but I did want to discuss what happened a couple of Saturdays ago between Mackenzie Dern and Marina Rodriguez.
I'll start with Rodriguez because I think her path is a little easier and more straight forward. Rodriguez is now ranked 4th after the win and her next fight will likely be a number one contender fight vs Carla Esparza to fight the winner of Rose vs Weili II. If Rose wins, the Rodriguez vs Esparza winner would be virtually guaranteed a title shot, if Weili were to win, things would get a little messier. However, that's too many if's for right now to go through to talk in great detail about. Rodriguez did call out former champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk for her long absence with no movement in the rankings. At this point, I'll be surprised if we ever see Joanna in another non-title fight, but that's just my own speculation on the situation. If she was all that interested in fighting, I think we would have seen her back by now and I don't get the feeling that Marina Rodriguez will all of the sudden peak her interest enough to get her back in the octagon. For me, it feels like Joanna only wants the rematch vs Zhang Weili or nothing. Anyways, to me, it feels like Rodriguez vs Esparza is pretty much already made.
Now, the interesting part of this fight to me was what happened with fan favorite Mackenzie Dern. Dern had been on a hot streak coming into the fight with Rodriguez having won her last four including her previous win over Nina Nunes. Normally when I ask "what's next?" I am referring to who is their next opponent and topics related to their next fight. When it comes to Dern, I really don't think that's where my mind went and it still isn't even a full week removed from the fight. For me, my take away from the fight is that Mackenzie Dern needs to do something about her style in order to elevate to the true elites of the division, where she obviously wants to go. I have heard a lot of people since this fight compare her to Demian Maia and I do like this comparison. I don't remember who I heard it from, but I didn't want to act like I came up with that myself because I didn't, but I really believe it fits. They both have tremendous ground based attacks, which is their strength and they will dominate virtually anyone else in their weight class in that regard. However, as many ground based fighters have before and there will be more in the future, they don't have as much success on the feet. There's no shame in this at all, everyone has an area of strength and the other realm (stand up or on the ground) is usually behind, with a few select fighters who have truly mastered both. Mastering both isn't even necessary as we have seen not only champions, but dominant champions who remained very raw in one of the two (Khabib on the feet, McGregor on the ground to name a few well known ones). What the difference is for those fighters and where Mackenzie Dern is at in her career is that she can't impose her will on her opponent and dictate the fight in a way that benefits her. We all know that Mackenzie Dern is one of the most dangerous fighters in her division on the ground with her Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. However, she was exposed by Rodriguez in that she has a hard time actually getting the fight to the ground. It was either on the broadcast before they went off air or on the post show that someone said her career takedown percentage is only 10%. It goes without saying that if you need to grapple to win, but struggle to get the fight to the ground, that's not a great thing. I've said this before many times, but I will stress again, I am not a fighter, I do not train, and I do not claim to have the answers, but obviously, this would change the game for Dern. If she were able to improve her wrestling to a degree that she could take down her opponents at a much higher rate, she would become infinitely more dangerous. My question was "what's next?". My answer to that is: I think she should take a break from in octagon competition. I think taking the time to work on wrestling and takedowns would do wonders for her and make her potentially one of the most dangerous fighters in the division, which she's already in the conversation for regardless. I don't say this as an insult, I only say it because I think with this work, Dern could potentially win a title and at the very least get into a title fight.
What do you think is next for both Rodriguez and Dern? Do you have any predictions for their next match up? For those reading this who do train, what specifically does Mackenzie Dern need to do with her wrestling? Just for my own curiosity, what techniques would be the easiest and most beneficial for her to use with her jiu-jitsu skills? Thanks for reading and expect me to be more active like I was pre midterm week.
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