Maycee Barber knows exactly who she wants next after notching the most impressive victory of her young career with a knockout of Amanda Ribas at UFC Jacksonville.
“I’ve been saying it time and time again, whether Alexa [Grasso] wins against Valentina [Shevchenko] or not, I do want that rematch,” Barber said Saturday at UFC Jacksonville’s post-fight press conference. “So we’ll see. That would be ideal, but we’ll see. I’m going to go back and talk to Hunter [Campbell], Mick [Maynard], and the team, and figure it out.”
“But that’s what I want,” Barber later added, “was Alexa and the rematch.”
Barber, 25, made quite a statement in Saturday’s co-main event, battering Ribas with a beautiful second-round head kick followed by a barrage of punches. The performance earned Barber an extra $50,000 in bonus money, extended her winning streak to five straight, and pushed her into second all-time for the most knockouts in the brief history of the UFC women’s flyweight division.
It also broke a streak of six consecutive bouts for her that ended in decisions and marked Barber’s first stoppage win since Oct. 2019, quieting plenty of criticisms Barber has heard over the past few years about her inability to finish fights without the judges.
“It means everything,” Barber said. “Every time I step out in the cage, I’m going out for a finish, and the competition is getting tougher, but at the same time I really needed to step it up and just get into that zone again, and just put myself in that position where I’m like, ‘You know what? There’s no way out of this except for me finishing this girl.’
“I think that with my last few performances, people are probably like, ‘Oh, well, she’s going to go to a decision, she’s backing down.’ But I’m not backing down and I’m coming to finish these girls again.”
As it stands, Barber is now 8-2 under the UFC umbrella, with her only losses coming in a 2020 battle against Roxanne Modafferi during which she suffered a torn ACL, and a 2021 decision loss to Alexa Grasso, who is now the UFC woman’s flyweight champion.
Grasso captured the title in stunning fashion this past March when she submitted longtime champion Valentina Shevchenko with a fourth-round face crank. The pair’s rematch is currently scheduled for a UFC Fight Night card on Sept. 16 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and Barber considers the matchup to be up for grabs for either woman.
“It’s a toss-up,” Barber said. “Alexa is an incredible fighter. Valentina was a dominant champion for so long for a reason. So honestly, it’s something where it’s hard to give a prediction because anything can happen.”
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