Mackenzie Dern is a UFC champion.
The popular star defeated her Brazilian compatriot Virna Jandiroba via five-round unanimous decision in the co-main event of UFC 321 to win the organization’s vacant strawweight title Saturday in Abu Dhabi.
Two judges scored the bout three rounds to two, while the other had it four rounds to one, all in favour of Dern who’s now 2-0 against Jandiroba in her career.
This was a rematch almost five full years in the making. Jandiroba and Dern met in late 2020 with Dern escaping with a hard-fought, three-round unanimous decision victory.
Dern, 32, joined the UFC in 2018 after a successful pre-MMA career as a jiu-jitsu world champion, while Jandiroba debuted in the UFC in 2019 as a former Invicta FC champion.
Jandiroba, 37, had success taking Dern down to the ground, securing multiple takedowns in each of the first four rounds, but Dern was landing the more aggressive and damaging strikes overall.
Dern has gone 6-4 since beating Jandiroba in their first meeting, with other notable decision wins over Tecia Torres and Loopy Godinez, and was coming off a January submission win over Amanda Ribas to position herself to fight for the vacant belt. Dern was the betting favourite entering the weekend and is now on her first three-fight win streak in four years.
Jandiroba had won five in a row entering UFC 321 and earned a title shot with back-to-back wins over past title challengers Amanda Lemos last summer and Yan Xiaonan at UFC 314 earlier this year.
The reason the UFC 321 co-main event was for a championship is that longtime 115-pound champion Zhang Weili vacated her title in order to move up to flyweight to challenge 125-pound champion Valentina Shevchenko next month at UFC 322 at Madison Square Garden.
from Sportsnet.ca
via i9bet
No comments:
Post a Comment