UFC flyweight Maycee Barber is dealing with a losing result yet again.
At UFC 258 this past Saturday, Barber (8-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC) dropped a unanimous decision to Alexa Grasso in the card’s co-main event. The defeat came on the heels of a 13-month layoff due to a knee injury sustained in her first career loss to Roxanne Modafferi in January 2020.
Training camp went great for Barber, and she gives full credit to Grasso (13-3 MMA, 5-3 UFC) for the winning performance. That said, Barber admitted that despite her knee being healed at 100 percent, what happened in her past appearance was still on her mind.
“I felt like my camp went great,” Barber told BJPenn.com in a recent interview. “Training was awesome. (My) weight cut went great, but I didn’t realize how much I would feel my knee in there and think about it. My timing was also off. My range was off. A lot of different things were not what I expected them to be. But props to Alexa because she had a great gameplan, and she did what she needed to do and she got the win.”
In Rounds 1 and 2, Barber struggled to match the offensive success of Grasso. The Mexican fighter seemed a step ahead, though Barber continued to throw at a high volume, as well. In Round 3, Barber turned up her pace and found success of her own. However, she couldn’t get a finish, and the momentum swung a little too late.
“I’m definitely happy with how the third round went, and I learned a lot,” Barber said. “Obviously, as soon as I lost, I wanted to deal with it. There were no injuries. I’m healthy, so it was a bitter pill to swallow like, ‘Dang, I didn’t perform. I didn’t do what I felt was going to happen.’ I was a little more bitter, so I didn’t think back about the lessons. Now, I am going to sit down and go through the whole camp, the training, and what I can learn from it.”
From the time Barber entered the UFC, she had the ambition of becoming the promotion’s youngest champion ever. Her confidence and abilities garnered a lot of attention. With the supporters came doubters, some of whom have celebrated Barber’s recent failures. She insists sh isn’t bothered by them.
“I think there are always going to be people that are, like, when they see someone with a goal or a plan, they either want to see you achieve it, or they want to see you fail miserably,” Barber said. “There are going to be both either way. Like I told you before, at least they’re watching. But yeah, there are always going to be people that want to see you fall on your face and laugh at you while you’re down. That’s fine. At the end of the day, I’m still the one getting in there, and not many people can do that.”
Despite the setbacks, Barber’s goals have remained constant. Barber doesn’t consider herself rushed, just someone experiencing bumps in the road. She said she hopes to get back in the cage as soon as May to continue her journey toward gold.
“The destination is still the same, but we just have another detour we need to go around,” Barber said. “The path might change a little bit, but the title is still the goal in the long run. How we get there, whether it is beat a bunch more people and make some money, we will find out. … There should be a lot of growth, and you will see a lot more grittiness and a lot more going after it and finishing the girls – a meaner version (of me).”
Maycee Barber opens up about UFC 258 loss: ‘We just have another detour’