How Mackenzie Dern Finished Randa Markos
Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC
Mackenzie Dern is without a doubt the most accomplished female Brazilian Jiu Jitsu athlete to ever set foot inside the UFC octagon. She’s left a string of mangled limbs and unconscious opponents in her wake on her path to contention in the strawweight division. Many thought Randa Markos would be just the sort of well rounded veteran to throw another roadblock in her path much as Amanda Ribas did October of 2019. After all, Markos has been in the game a long time and has taken some impressive scalps, notably Angela Hill and former champion Carla Esparza. While she’s arguably on the downslope of her career, veteran UFC fighters are notoriously hard to submit with grappling defense being one of the last things to go as a fighter exits their prime. It was also an open question as to whether or not Dern would even be able to make it to the mat as her wrestling game is rudimentary and she didn’t figure to be much of a threat to Markos on the feet.
As it turned out Dern wasn’t a threat on the feet and didn’t attempt any takedowns. Instead, Markos made the very ill advised decision to follow Dern to the mat when Dern slipped on a high kick. Now it would be wrong to say that following an accomplished BJJ player to the ground is a bad idea in all circumstances. Ribas took Dern down numerous times in their fight and won an easy decision, and we’ve seen countless other BJJ savants lose fights to strong top players who stayed safe and won rounds with strategic ground and pound and top control time. Markos however made a critical error: she didn’t just follow Dern to the mat, she dove headfirst into her guard. A more cautious approach might have let her approach the Brazilian/American without breaking posture or allowing Dern to tie her up with her legs, historically the most dangerous position to be in with the multiple time Mundials champ. But that’s not what happened. Instead Markos rushed to get on top and in doing so immediately found herself fending off omoplatas, triangles, and armbars.
Upon jumping into Dern’s guard Markos was already fighting off submission attacks. Here Dern is looking for her trademark omoplata. She probably would have gotten it had Markos’s arm been pointing towards her legs instead of being in a bicep curl position. Dern briefly thinks about a variation of the Mir lock (basically an Americana from guard), but quickly realizes she doesn’t have it as Markos moves to her right to take away the omoplata angle. Instead she transitions to a triangle choke immediately locking up her legs and grabbing her own leg and Markos’s head to keep her posture broken.
Markos showed some good defense here, but ultimately she was too passive as Dern continued to add threats and improve her position on bottom.
Dern has Markos completely on the defensive here. Markos struggles to posture but can’t do anything but fight hands and try to maintain her balance as Dern first tries to bring an arm across to switch to an armbar and then goes back to threatening an inversion and sweep with the grip under Markos’s thigh.
Markos stood firm for a while, but her lack of proactive movement (she never really took any risks to try and better her own position) meant that eventually the superior grappler was going to find an attack. In this case it was a beautiful backroll sweep off and omoplata, a technique that Roger Gracie also used to use with success.
Markos leans hard to her left to prevent Dern from turning the corner and taking the omoplata. Instead of fighting her, Dern just rides her momentum and turns the shoulder attack into a sweep. Note how inverted Dern gets before starting the sweep and the control she has over Markos’s right wrist: the former means she can push hard off her shoulders to generate power for the sweep, the latter prevents Markos from posting out to stop the reversal.
Once on bottom Markos continued to defend capably but she just had no answer for Dern’s pressure and transitions. Dern was able to work her way back and forth until she got to a 3/4 mount. Markos made a pretty basic mistake in this position, which was she left what had been an underhooking arm outstretched and around Dern’s body, a textbook invitation for a monoplata. The monoplata isn’t a very common submission in BJJ or MMA, but with a gift wrapped setup like this how could Dern resist?
Sliding higher up Markos’s body Dern prepares to throw her leg over for the submission. Markos seems more worried about her trapped right hand than Dern extending her left arm and pressing on her head, perhaps due to unfamiliarity with what is after all a fairly rare submission. Once Dern gets the leg over the face it’s the beginning of the end.
The monoplata is technically finished with pressure on the shoulder, similar to its eponymous omoplata big brother.. In practice the monoplata often ends up being more of an entry to an armbar than an independent finish. Had Markos not defended as well as she did once the submission came on the finish might have looked more classical, as shown here by the originator of the move, Marcelo Garcia:
In a position almost identical to the one Dern found herself in in the fight Garcia shows the classic finish. Once the leg is over the face, just lifting your own leg puts tremendous pressure on your opponent’s shoulder.
Markos did the right things in defense. She used the fact that Dern had one leg still trapped to keep changing the angle of her elbow with respect to Dern’s body (had Dern had that leg free she could have locked up Markos’s upper body a lot more tightly and prevented most of the escape attempts), and she also tried to free her head from Dern’s right leg. But throughout the final sequence Dern maintained control and just kept taking away angles for Markos to defend. The final detail that made the submission happen was the work of a master.
Markos fights as valiantly as you’d expect from such a veteran pugilist, but she’s in too deep. Dern takes the arm from side to side always trying to find the angle that will allow her to put maximum pressure on the elbow. She eventually manages to trap Markos’s arm in her left armpit, but Markos can still find some space to move. Until, that is, Dern turns her hips to her right and brings her left thigh up high into Markos’s armpit. This small detail means that even with her leg trapped she’s able to shut off just enough of Randa’s movement to get the finishing angle. A gorgeous piece of grappling.
Markos is a tough, experienced fighter, but in going into the one sort of position where Dern had a significant advantage she made a fatal mistake. Will Dern’s incredible BJJ talent take her much further in the UFC? It seems unlikely given her under-developed wrestling and striking, but as long as she’s able by hook or by crook to get women to engage with her on the mat she’s got a chance against anyone in the world.