JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – [autotag]Maycee Barber[/autotag] wants to see [autotag]Alexa Grasso[/autotag] standing across the octagon for her next UFC fight, and she doesn’t care if the title is on the line or not.
After suffering a unanimous decision loss to Grasso (16-3 MMA, 8-3 UFC) at UFC 258 in February 2021, Barber (13-2 MMA, 8-2 UFC) has reeled off five consecutive victories. The most emphatic of those came at Saturday’s UFC on ABC 5 event, where she dismantled Amanda Ribas en route to a second-round TKO that received Performance of the Night honors.
The growth in Barber’s game in recent years was more evident than ever against Ribas, and now she wants to show exactly how far she’s come by rematching the last person to beat her. Grasso, who went on from her fight with Barber to become UFC women’s flyweight champion, is scheduled to defend the belt against Valentina Shevchenko on Sept. 16, and Barber wants to run things back regardless of the result.
“I’ve been saying it time and time again: Whether Alexa wins against Valentina again or not, I do want that rematch,” Barber told MMA Junkie and other reporters at the UFC on ABC 5 post-fight news conference. “So, we’ll see. That would be ideal. We’ll see. I’m going to go back and talk to Hunter (Campbell) and Mick (Maynard) and the team, then we’ll figure it out.”
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Barber has been the target of some fan criticism during her winning streak because some of the fights went done to the wire. Her split decision wins over Andrea Lee and Miranda Maverick in particular garnered some negativity, and it helped drive Barber to be more dominant.
She hopes the showing against Ribas will be just a sliver of what’s to come, and said it was a serious goal to get her hand raised without the help of the judges.
“It means everything,” Barber said. “Every time I step out of the cage I’m going out for a finish. The competition is getting tougher, but at the same time I really needed to step it up and get in that zone again and get myself in that position where I’m like, ‘There’s no way out of this except for me finishing this girl.'”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ABC 5.