Raquel Pennington and her questionable corner may be dominating the narrative coming out of UFC 224, but, going in everyone was talking about Mackenzie Dern. The former world champion black belt has an inescapable air of high expectations around her, and when she missed weight by seven pounds for her strawweight bout against Amanda Cooper, questions about her dedication and potential fighting future leapt to the forefront.
The Brazilian Athletic Commission (CAB), on the other hand, leapt toward her pocket book. In a recent interview with Ariel Helwani on the MMA hour, Dern revealed that outside the normal 30% of her show money – all of which went to Cooper in this instance (normally 10% goes to the commission) – Cooper also got 15% of Dern’s win bonus as well.