“I feel like that’s where my confidence is coming from, watching those two fights and knowing that this is also a five-round fight,” Hill said regarding Dern’s two prior main event defeats. “I think one of those fights may have gone to her if it was a three-round fight just because she goes hard for the rounds that she wins. She goes hard, she gets the takedown and then it’s hard to get her off of you. I feel like I’ll be able to get out of that stuff. I think my last loss against Virna [Jandiroba], it was a really good way to tell me what I needed to work on. After that, I did grappling competitions, I really focused on just getting out of the positions I was getting stuck in, and now I feel super scrambly; I feel like a wet bar of soap, I’m hard to hold onto. As soon as I get out, I’m back on it, I’m back hitting you, I’m back making you feel uncomfortable. I think that’s what she’s going to feel. If she gets it to the ground, she’s going to stand up and want to take a breath and I’m not going to let her.”
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Like Hill’s previous two opponents, Dern carries a lot of hype behind her and brings a large fan base and audience to Saturday’s main event. Fighting top dog after top dog, Hill’s UFC journey hasn’t been an easy one. But throughout all the highs and lows, Hill garnered as much experience as she could to develop her game, and feels that at this stage of her career, she has the tool set and confidence to steal anyone’s hype away from them and make it her own.
“The most exciting thing about this matchup is her hype,” Hill said. “The fact that she has a lot of fans, she’s had a lot of hype. I feel like she’s been given a lot of favorable matchups, too, and I’ve had the complete opposite career, where I was thrown to the wolves immediately. I got cut, I had to work my way through Invicta to get back and then immediately again, a fight with [Jessica] Andrade. I’ve never had an easy fight in the UFC. I might’ve made my last two look easy, but they were both coming in with a lot of hype, too, because of the people that they beat before me.
