RIO DE JANEIRO – Both the main and co-main event of Saturday’s UFC 224 made weight on Friday, but another main card fighter’s miss was what really made headlines. Mackenzie Dern , who meets Amanda Cooper in the pay-per-view main card of the event at Rio de Janeiro’s Jeunesse Arena, missed the 116-pound limit allotted to non-title strawweight fights by a whopping seven pounds . Cooper took the fight regardless , though not without throwing some shade , and will take 30 percent of Dern’s show money as a result. Dern (6-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) and Cooper (3-3 MMA, 2-2 UFC) met again in the afternoon, this time at the ceremonial weigh-ins , where an abnormally serious Dern mouthed an apology to her home audience and saw her attempts at a handshake shot down by Cooper before a tense face-off. UFC strawweights Nina Ansaroff and Tecia Torres were at the venue as well, both serving as guest fighters and corners for their respective partners, title headliners Amanda Nunes and Raquel Pennington, respectively, so we asked for their thoughts on the bad weight miss.
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