Fight camp for many fighters competing during these first events back, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, has looked anything but normal. That’s the case with Hannah Cifers, who returns to the octagon this weekend at UFC Vegas.
Cifers (10-4) stepped up to face Mackenzie Dern on short notice back in April — only to have the fight pushed back due to government restrictions. The date change is a bit of a silver lining for Cifers really.
“I had a decent-length camp this time. It’s nice to have time to prepare for the fight,” she told Cageside Press during the UFC Vegas virtual media day.
When it comes to what sort of camp she was able to get in, Cifers admitted that there was “a lot of part time [training], with my coaches. But I was able to get some partners in to get some work in.”
Opponent Mackzenie Dern is highly decorated in the world of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, of course. And while that is one of the areas she brought training partners in to work on, “I’m still working on other areas in my game too,” Cifers noted. “I have plenty of areas I need to work on a lot too. So I’m just trying to get everything better.”
Cifers is notoriously soft-spoken in front of the cameras, and even in a virtual setting, barely registered above a whisper. It seems having the media remote wasn’t a help for the North Carolina native.
“Not really. It’s a little awkward just looking at a camera,” she admitted. Instead, she’ll do her talking in the octagon this weekend against Dern.
UFC on ESPN 9 goes down this Saturday, May 30 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, NV. The event airs live on ESPN (TSN in Canada).
