Two days from UFC 224, Amanda Bobby Cooper (4-3) already has the end in mind and is ready too play spoiler Saturday night.
Cooper’s opponent, Mackenzie Dern (6-0) is coming into UFC 224 with as much hype surrounding her as any female performer post-Ronda Rousey, and Cooper has been vocal in her confidence that she will be the one to derail the hype train and spoil the plans of anyone hoping for the next big thing in WMMA. Speaking with MMA Fighting during media day, Cooper made no mistake about it: bringing her plans to fruition is all that has been on her mind. And when it’s over, it can again be at peace:
“I’ve got an obsession with this fight. I truly believe that I can’t wait for this fight to end so that I can get this girl out of my head.”
But Cooper doesn’t stop at repeating the general prediction for Saturday night. She proceeds to describe step by step how the fight will look:
“I visualize the fight and Mackenzie diving for sloppy takedowns and me picking her apart on the feet. And in the second round, I believe it’s just going to be too much for her and she’s going to start to doubt herself. She’s going to say, ‘Crap, I can’t get this girl down. What do I do from here?’ And the second round is when I’m going to beat her with a TKO.”
Cooper may be going all mystic on Mac, but she didn’t come to this visualization without a scouting report or proper preparation:
“Very easy to train. All her fights are the same. All her strikes are the same. All her takedowns are the same. It’s pretty easy to train. I brought in some high-level wrestlers, high-level jiu-jitsu girls, and they stayed in my house the whole time.”
UFC 224 will feature a classic grappler vs. striker bout in a fight that arguably has as much buzz as the main event itself. It is clear that the UFC and MMA community are braced to skyrocket Mackenzie to the moon, but Cooper is already at work at ensuring the hype machine’s malfunction.
What are the chances Amanda Cooper’s Vision of the Fight Comes to Pass?
