Preview: UFC Vegas 101 ‘Dern vs. Ribas 2’

The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s first show of 2025 has arrived, and the promotion eases into the New Year with its latest outing from the UFC Apex on Saturday in Las Vegas. The UFC Vegas 101 main event is a rematch half a decade in the making, as Amanda Ribas looks to recreate her breakout win from 2019 against Mackenzie Dern and re-establish herself as a women’s strawweight contender in the process. Beyond the headliner, there are some potentially entertaining bouts that feature veteran talent like Santiago Ponzinibbio and Abdul Razak Alhassan, along with a well-matched battle between Chris Curtis and Roman Kopylov. However, the most significant point of intrigue might involve the Octagon debut of uber-prospect Austin Bashi, who gets a difficult draw right off the bat against Christian Rodriguez.

Now to the UFC Vegas 101 “Dern vs. Ribas 2” preview:

Women’s Strawweights

#6 WSW | Mackenzie Dern (14-5, 9-5 UFC) vs. #8 WSW | Amanda Ribas (13-5, 7-4 UFC)

ODDS: Ribas (-205), Dern (+170)

The UFC’s first main event of 2025 picks up on a recent trend, as the promotion has become more open to rematches; and like a lot of those fights, this one has seen just enough evolution from the fighters involved to be worth revisiting years later. Dern was just about as hyped as any female newcomer has ever been ahead of her UFC debut in 2018—a highly-decorated grappler that was essentially born on the mats and had already proven to have some impressive wizardry on the regional scene. Her first UFC fight against Ashley Yoder was an ugly decision win that was a bit rough, but she quickly ran over Amanda Bobby Brundage two months later to regain her momentum and then some. It wasn’t until her next fight against Ribas a year and a half later that Dern actually paid for the flaws in her game. For all of Dern’s skill on the ground, there were precious few ancillary skills to actually set those strengths up. Her striking wasn’t much of anything at the time, but she also wasn’t a particularly strong wrestler, which allowed the still relatively unknown Ribas to neutralize the action as necessary, stay ahead of Dern and coast to a victory as the much more complete fighter. In the half-decade since, Dern has done a much better job of putting things together at points, though her career has been marked by an extremely frustrating lack of consistency. There are times when Dern fights to her maximum capacity, applying pressure and earning quick submission wins, and even if she isn’t always focused on fighting to her strengths, she has still found success through leaning on aggression. She has some natural power and durability, which can make up for her messiness if she just sticks to that approach. However, for every step forward, there’s usually a lackluster performance right around the corner where Dern looks rather aimless, losing a passive striking battle that brings into question her—or her camp’s—ability to game plan. Dern’s two fights in 2023 essentially sum up the duality of her career. Some personal turmoil fueled her to the best performance of her career in an extended beatdown of Angela Hill, only for her to follow that up by changing her team and putting in a terrible showing against Jessica Andrade. Fortunately for Dern, 2024 saw her return to a form much closer to that of the Hill fight, resulting in a close loss to Amanda Lemos and an impressive win over Lupita Godinez. Nevertheless, she’s still a bit hard to trust heading into this rematch against Ribas.

As for Ribas, the win over Dern capped off a breakout 2019 campaign for the Brazilian that was well over two years in the making. Ribas initially signed with the UFC in 2017, only to immediately get flagged by USADA, and the promotion chose to wait the situation out. Ribas proved to be worth that wait, as her debut win over Emily Whitmire was an absolute revelation. Ribas looked excellent, then showed a ton of bubbly charisma in her post-fight interview. That made it a bit of a surprise when she was seemingly set up to be fed to Dern, but after that victory, the UFC clearly saw her as someone to get behind, giving her some plum spots in winnable fights. Ribas’ hard-charging style eventually charged her into a knockout from Marina Rodriguez at the beginning of 2021, setting up a run where she has alternated wins and losses in her last eight bouts, staying relevant but never building much momentum. Part of that has been Ribas’ failure to stick to a weight class, as she's constantly bounced between 115 and 125 pounds; and while it’s clearly easier for her to make flyweight, she’s also much worse in that weight class, consistently hitting a physical wall that her aggression cannot overcome. The good news? This marks her return—for now—to 115 pounds, where things have still gone swimmingly since the loss to Rodriguez. She was able to outwork and outlast Virna Jandiroba and Luana Pinheiro thanks to a combination of horsepower and persistence. For that reason, it’s hard to see how this goes much differently from her first fight with Dern in the aggregate. Dern is a much-improved fighter, but while Ribas has her own technical flaws, she’s still the much better put together competitor. She can match Dern in terms of physicality, along with being a more reliable bet to pour on offense. The pick is Ribas via decision.

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Dern vs. Ribas
Ponzinibbio vs. Harris
Almeida vs. Alhassan
Kopylov vs. Curtis
Bashi vs. Rodriguez
Medic vs. Soriano
The Prelims