So, I was thinking about that Mackenzie Dern and Amanda Cooper fight from way back. You know, the one from UFC 224. It wasn’t just about Dern getting the W, it was the whole shebang, how it all played out, that got me really digging into it later on.
I actually sat down and decided to really try and pick that fight apart. My whole deal was to look at it from a few different angles, not just the obvious stuff. It’s never just about watching the final submission, right? There’s always more to it, the bits and pieces that lead up to it.
- First off, there was the striking, or what passed for it. Let’s be real, neither of ’em were setting the world on fire with their hands back then.
- Then, the big thing for me was how Dern just closed that distance. That was the real switch.
- And then, boom, it hit the mat. That’s where I really tried to focus my own little “practice,” if you wanna call it that.
My Attempt at Figuring Things Out
I spent a good chunk of an afternoon just replaying Dern’s ground game in that fight. Hit rewind, play, rewind, play. It’s one thing to see someone tap, but it’s a whole other game trying to spot all those little shifts, the way she moved her hips, the constant battle for grips that got Cooper into that mess.
I even remember trying to drill some of those specific setups when I was rolling at my gym. My buddies on the mat were probably looking at me sideways, wondering why I was suddenly so fixated on these particular sequences. They looked so smooth, almost too easy when Dern did them, like she just sucked people into her game.
Truth be told, most of the time I tried to mimic that stuff, I just ended up looking like a complete amateur. It’s like seeing a pro artist whip up a masterpiece and then you try to do the same thing with a kid’s coloring book. But, you know, you still pick up tiny things, little details you’d totally miss otherwise.
This whole thing actually brings back a funny memory, totally off topic from MMA, but it kinda fits. I was helping a mate move house. We had this monster of a couch, and these really awkward, twisty stairs. We were sweating, cursing, getting nowhere. Then this older fella, must’ve been nearly seventy, just strolls up, takes one look, tells us to change our grip, shift our weight just a tiny bit. And like magic, that couch practically floated up. It wasn’t about being the strongest guy; it was about understanding how things work, the leverage. That’s what Dern’s jiu-jitsu felt like in that fight – pure, smart mechanics against someone who, once they were in her world, was just plain outmatched in that specific area.
And man, the weight miss! Everyone was yapping about that. Seven pounds over! That’s a hefty chunk. You go into a fight with that hanging over everything. Some folks were all high and mighty, saying Cooper should’ve walked away. Easy to say when you’re not the one in that spot, huh? But then Dern goes out and pulls off that performance. Kinda makes you push the scales to the back of your mind for a minute, even though, yeah, it’s a big deal.
It’s a bit funny, really. People always get hyped about the flashy finish, the highlight reel moment. But the real grind, the stuff that actually gets you to that point, that’s usually the ugly part, the trial and error. Just like me fumbling around trying to get a handle on one tiny transition from that fight. You don’t get to be as good as Dern without falling on your face a million times in the gym, I reckon.
So yeah, that fight. It wasn’t just another tick in the win column. For me, it turned into a bit of a case study, a solid reminder of how having one super specialized skill can just flip the entire script, even when other parts of your game are still, let’s just say, cooking. Made me appreciate the whole process a bit more, even my own clumsy efforts to learn a thing or two.
