Mackenzie Dern

“When you're an athlete that receives so much attention since the beginning, and everybody has a tip, everybody wants to take you as their athlete, a manager making you all kinds of promises that he'll make you a lot of money. It was always like that since the beginning of my career.”

“If you want to know the best jiu-jitsu in MMA, Charles 'Do Bronx.'”

“People see us like we're super heroes and all we do is fight and train all day and we're mean, but no.”

“I'm really just hoping that they have more mom champs. If I'm the first, you know that gave birth, I think it would be a big inspiration for a lot of people.”

“The ground game is a very good strength to have.”

“Even at 115 pounds, I have curves. Many women fighters, when they cut weight, they look like skeletons.”

“I've always wanted to fight a wrestler.”

“I got into MMA because of what Ronda did. She showed that we can live off of sponsors, we can live off of MMA.”

“When I made the transition from jiu-jitsu to MMA, I was doing these different kinds of weight cuts where they want you to lose water weight. In jiu-jitsu, you don't have that.”

“I'm here to make history. I'm not here to get punched in the face and be just another one.”

“Tecia has her strategy. She's been kind of overwhelming the girls, just pressing, pressing. She's really living up to her nickname, 'The Tiny Tornado.'”

“Many coaches and managers had plans for me, but I was still learning MMA.”

“I've got to make sure that if I hit, I hit hard. If I'm moving, I'm moving good on my feet.”

“We can get hurt in a fight, we can lose sponsors, we can lose value as a fighter, but let's go.”

“You want to be the person who gets to fight when you want to fight and ask for what you want.”

“When I became pregnant, I took the nine months, kind of relaxing. It was good because my daughter, she took all the muscle, but she absorbed a lot of the fat, too. I was kind of able to start from zero. My body restarted.”

“I know what you need to do to have success.”

“I don't think people are so intimidated by me. I'm always smiling to everyone. I'm not the scariest person.”

“Whenever I finish the training, if I see my weight's down too low, I'm eating a little bit more.”

“When I first came to the UFC they were kind of rushing me a lot in the beginning, like 'Oh, the next Ronda Rousey' and all these things, and I'm just kind of happy I'm building my own story.”