It's been almost 10 months since Mackenzie Dern last fought and claimed the UFC strawweight championship, which stands as her longest layoff outside of pregnancy keeping her sidelined for 17 months between 2018 and 2019, so it's only natural to wonder about ring rust.
It's at least been a little bit on the mind of her Dern's head coach, Jason Parillo, heading into her first title defense.
"I am a ring-rust guy," Parillo said when asked about the concern on MMA Junkie Radio. "I do believe you kind of get a little rusty when you're not in there."
However, Parillo is confident in Dern (16-5 MMA, 11-5 UFC) being an outlier as she prepares to face Gillian Robertson (17-8 MMA, 14-6 UFC) in the UFC 330 co-main event Saturday night at Xfinity Mobile Center
in Philadelphia.
"I don't think that's going to overly affect Mackenzie," Parillo said. "I think the rest has been good for her. We were somewhat kind of getting ready for a fight in June. We were thinking that maybe we would have a chance to be on that White House card, so that's what we were holding off to, which ended up boosting us to a couple months later. … (Ring rust) hasn't been a huge factor in my brain because I like that Mackenzie's had a lot of free time to really improve and try to still close some of the holes that she has in her game, on the feet obviously.
"It turned out we're going to be fighting a grappler (in Robertson), but if you don't use it, you lose it. You've got to make sure you're in the gym sharpening the blade and continuing to improve. I think, in all reality, the extra time we had helped to be able to stay in the gym and stick with what we've been improving on."
Robertson will enter UFC 330 riding the wave of five consecutive wins that earned her first title shot. Parillo knows Robertson will be confident, especially in her grappling, but said she's in for a rude awakening when she gets a taste of Dern's standout Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Jason Parillo 'a ring-rust guy' but isn't worried about Mackenzie Dern at UFC 330
