In this clip from a full episode, Mackenzie Dern gets honest about what it felt like to get punched hard for the first time in the UFC, against Yan Xiaonan, and why the real pain only hit after the adrenaline faded. She says the over-hand punch in round one felt brutal, and even though she stayed on her feet, she remembers thinking “this hurts so bad.”
Mackenzie describes how inside the cage you get hit harder than you expect, but the hits you feel afterward; the aches, the broken nose, the soreness everywhere are the ones that stick with you. She says training feels worse sometimes because you don’t have the adrenaline to “power you through.”
This clip pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to walk into that cage and lose yourself for five minutes.
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