Mackenzie Dern was so heavy when she arrived in Brazil, the commission wanted to remove her from UFC 224

Mackenzie Dern never came close to making weight for UFC 224.

She's only two years into her professional career and Mackenzie Dern has already missed weight three times. In her sophomore UFC bout, she came in seven pounds over the strawweight limit. Her punishment was being forced to forfeit 30% of her show money to Amanda Bobby Cooper. However, her reward was the fight going ahead as a catchweight contest which ended in a first-round submission victory. Coming in just under flyweight limit took the shine off a dominant win. Especially considering she specifically addressed how frequently she's asked about her weight on media day. Former UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz even claimed missing weight by so much 'almost seemed intentional'. https://twitter.com/TheJivemaster/status/994948612579844096

All the heavy lifting

Dern addressed the weigh-in controversy on the MMA Hour. She confirmed that she missed her flight to Rio for fight week, but she believes other factors were at play in her coming in heavy.

"I think the biggest reason is the diet from a lot of weeks ago. I know for sure a lot of things that happened throughout the whole camp, I missed my flight. So I knew coming to Brazil I would retain water, but I was counting one extra day."

She revealed that her weight upon arriving in Brazil was 139.5 lbs, which is over the bantamweight limit. The commission was so concerned with her ability to make weight, they initially wanted to pull her from the card. She claims they issued her a challenge to hit a specific target before allowing her to continue the cut.

"But even when I arrived in Brazil, I wasn't scared I was heavy. The commission told me that they didn't want to let me fight. As soon as I came to Brazil, they wanted to pull me out on Tuesday when I arrived. But, I said, 'No, it's ok.' I just flew 14 hours drinking gallons of water, I didn't do any exercise. Of course I'm going to be heavy. So they made me make a weight the next day. So I dehydrated two days early to show I made a weight before and when I made that weight on Wednesday, they let me continue cutting."

According to Dern, she weighed 131.4 lbs on Wednesday. She claimed that she typically likes to come in somewhere in the 120s at the start of fight week.