Mackenzie Dern reveals story of husband getting into fight with ex-coach
Mackenzie Dern is now in search of a new gym for her next fight.
Dern returned to her previous gym only to find out she was no longer welcomed.
She has been training at Black House in Los Angeles but had to leave after an incident involving her coach Juan Gomez and her husband Wesley Santos occurred.
Mackenzie isn’t exactly sure what caused the incident but when her coach invited her to the gym to talk business the discussion quickly escalated.
“My ex-coach Juan Gomez, I don’t know what happened that he called us to go to the academy to talk,” Dern said on the What the Heck show.
“I think he was unhappy with a bonus, like money-wise for my last fight. Basically, I always ask my coaches, ‘Hey, during camp, if you have anything, just talk to my husband.’ Obviously, at home me and him talk about everything, so we’re the same person, but when I’m in camp I don’t want to have to think about it. I don’t want to think about money or coaches or anything like that, let’s just talk about training.
“So my husband talked to him. My husband’s like this surfer guy, you know, totally good vibes, afro, definitely not the fighter style. He went to go talk to him and [Gomez] was just like, ‘No, if you want to come to the academy, come to the academy and we’ll talk,’ and hung up. We went to the academy and he just swept dirt onto my husband, pushed him, and my husband pushed him back and they just went into a fistfight. It wasn’t like a brawl, a crazy brawl, it was like a street fight or technical fistfight. Back and forth, my husband’s doing feints, and I’m like, ‘Where’s he learning all this?’ It was so crazy.”
Looking back Dern finds the story funny as the altercation was cheered on by the gym.
“I think they both kind of thought that they were going to separate this fight and everyone’s just kind of like, ‘Hey, one-on-one,’” Dern said. “My dad’s there trying to coach his son-in-law, ‘Okay, turn to your right, you’re doing good.’ And they’re fully fighting and my husband did so good.
“As soon as I saw that my coach attacked my husband, that just finished it for us. I love Black House and everything they’ve done for me, but that coach, I can’t work with that. No matter how much, I don’t know, if you’re mad about it because your bonus wasn’t high enough, you just can’t attack someone. Especially when my husband is so humble with water and he’s like, ‘Can we have that talk that you asked me to do?’ I don’t know what happened. To this day we still don’t know exactly what pushed it to that level.”
The Black House gym has not commented on the incident.
Dern has since been training with coach Parillo.
“It’s crazy how much information, how much it’s opened my eyes,” Dern said of working with Parillo. “A totally different style of coaching, of me learning and everything, different energy. It’s really opened my eyes to different things that I was missing, that I was doing wrong, little details that he gave me that helped my striking so much more. I feel way more balanced, I guess not throwing so much, leaning into my punches, I’m way more set.
“Just in training there’s Luke Rockhold and [Marlon] ‘Chito’ Vera and Scott Eastwood and just all these guys out there training, and we’re all just exchanging information and having fun. And coach Parillo’s there just helping me prepare. … It’s just a good energy, it really opened my eyes to so many more things now.”
