Philadelphia — “I actually had the longest route out of any female to a title fight,” Gillian Robertson noted during her UFC 330 media day appearance on Wednesday. “This will be my 21st fight with the UFC.”
Canada’s Robertson holds a host of UFC records, including being tied with “absolute idol” Amanda Nunes for the most finishes among women in the promotion. Now, she gets her first crack at gold in the co-main event of UFC 330, taking on strawweight champ Mackenzie Dern.
Fan support has jumped up at least in part, notably among her fellow Canadians, she noted. “I felt a lot of the Canadian fans getting behind me I will say, 100%. Canada has been in full support.”
And while the fight has been looked at as grappler versus grappler, “I feel like her striking is aggressive,” opined Robertson. “She’s very defensively open for my strikes as well, but she’s definitely going to throw everything she’s got.”
Robertson has stated ahead of the fight that Dern doesn’t like her, and doubled down on that during her media day session, despite Dern publicly stating otherwise.
“She was making comments all through the camp about how she doesn’t know me, she doesn’t think my jiu-jitsu is good, and all this stuff. And now she’s like ‘oh no, it’s not anything, it’s not that I don’t like her.’ I’m like ‘why are we trying to take this back now?’ You were talking all this sh*t through camp, keep that same energy.”
For her own part, “I don’t like her right now. We’re about to fight each other this week,” Robertson admitted.
There were setbacks along the road to this title shot for “The Savage,” who spent a large chunk of her UFC run at flyweight. Despite notching several records for submission and finishes, there were losses to Maycee Barber, Tabatha Ricci, Miranda Maverick and others. And there were never any doubts that crept into Robertson’s mind, she told Cageside Press on Wednesday.
“No it’s just been about the joy of the ride. I’ve just been having fun with it the whole time,” explained Robertson. “I feel like one of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned is, literally as I was taking steps out of the octagon when I was TKO’d by Maycee Barber, my coach Din [Thomas] came up to me and was like ‘it’s over.’ And it’s like, you just have to realize in those moments, it’s over, there’s nothing you can do about it, and you just have to keep pushing forward.”
Should she submit Dern, a BJJ champ several times over, this Saturday, “I think that would definitely be one of my top submissions in the UFC. Especially, there is no one as credentialed in the UFC in BJJ as she is. And she’s never been subbed before. So I think to get that feather in my cap would be great.”
Gillian Robertson noted that the likes of Weili Zhang and Fatima Kline are among the names circling the title picture, and on the radar should she come away with the title on Saturday. With that in mind, she’d love to fight in Canada next, but is willing to make the trip to China.
“Obviously Canada is where I’d love to have it, but if Weili is coming back, I’m down to go to Shanghai.”
Watch the full UFC 330 media day appearance by Gillian Robertson above.
