Expectations have been high around unbeaten prospect Maycee Barber every since an impressive UFC debut – and Barber had no problem embracing them ahead of her UFC on ESPN+ 6 meeting with J.J. Aldrich this past Saturday. Barber did win, and in rather emphatic fashion, but that was only after spending more than 5 minutes being largely outworked by her underdog opponent. How do we reconcile our own expectations for Barber with a performance that was as impressive as it was imperfect? What does Saturday’s come-from-behind win tell us about the future of “The Future”? MMA Junkie’s Ben Fowlkes, Fernanda Prates and Simon Samano provide their opinions in this edition of “Triple Take.
Ben Fowlkes: She’s absolutely beatable – for now
What did we see as Aldrich was repeatedly stinging Barber with straight punch counters that sent her reeling again and again early on in this fight? We saw a fighter who is very raw, very unpolished and very beatable.
Then, when Barber turned the tables and ended the fight with one brief outpouring of violence, we saw a fighter who’s got the attitude and the physical scaffolding to really be something. It’s just that, for now, she’s leaning a little too heavily on those things.
It makes sense. Barber is still so young and so inexperienced. With more gym time and a little seasoning, she’ll probably close a lot of those holes in her game, and probably pretty quickly. But by hyping her up so much this early in her career, the UFC has given other fighters in the division an incentive to go after her now, while she’s got some glaring vulnerabilities, so they can get the shine from being the first one to beat her.
It’s the Sage Northcutt problem all over again. You tell us some young fighter is the next big thing while they’re still a work in progress, you make it worth some older fighter’s while to seek them out as a target.
And if you intentionally keep your budding new star away from any dog with teeth sharp enough to bite, you invite us to question your matchmaking choices. Then, if they do happen to lose to someone who wasn’t hired to win, it looks even worse. (Shouts out to Bryan Barberena.)
In a few years, Barber could be a problem for the whole division. But that fighter we saw on Saturday night? She’s the version you’d want to face before she has time to get any better.
Next page – Fernanda Prates: Dominance is alluring, but handling adversity is invaluable
Fernanda Prates: Dominance is alluring, but handling adversity is invaluable
You know when someone says they have good news and bad news and asks which one you want to hear first? Unless you’re a monster unfit to exist in organized society (sorry), chances are you’ll say you want the bad news first.
That’s kind of how I feel about Maycee Barber’s performance in Nashville.
We definitely got some bad news in Round 1, when we saw J.J. Aldrich finding her distance, landing punches with ease and basically picking apart Barber. Aldrich was so in the zone for those first 5 minutes that, as volatile as MMA can be, it seemed like it would take an extraordinary development for the tides to turn in Barber’s favor.
But then an extraordinary development did happen. Barber sat on her stool, listened to her corner and came back to the bout as confidently as she’d entered it, going on to score a violent TKO win.
There are several ways to look at this performance – and they can all be simultaneously correct. Did Barber show flaws that need to be addressed? Yes. Did we see a fighter who’s promising but still a bit green? Yes. Does it make us think that she’s not yet ready to go up against experienced flyweights like champion Valentina Shevchenko? Absolutely.
But it also showed that Barber can take damage and handle adversity. And that’s a seriously underrated skill in a sport where flat-out dominance is so alluring – Johnny Walker, anyone? – but, for the most part, unsustainable.
We’ve seen a recent example of that with Dominick Reyes, who went from being seen as this heavy-handed savior of the UFC’s stale 205-pound division to having a call-out of Jon Jones basically laughed at. And that was after a win against a former title challenger, no less.
But perhaps no fighter embodies that better than former champion Ronda Rousey. For years, we saw Rousey not only beat people, but do it quickly and somewhat easily. There are plenty of fighters who are unbeaten, but not too many that look unbeatable, and no amount of revisionist history changes the fact that this is how she looked for a while.
We didn’t know how Rousey would respond to real adversity in the cage until Holly Holm showed up to demand that answer. And we all saw what happened. We put Rousey on a pedestal, only to knock her off of it the minute she didn’t live up to our unrealistic expectations.
After the fight, Barber said that she intends to “take my career a little bit different” than Rousey. We’ll see what that means moving forward, but it’s already started out differently. Considering how quick people are to hop off the hype train the minute it malfunctions, it’s a good thing that Barber’s is slow coming off the station.
Next page – Simon Samano: Character goes a long way
Simon Samano: Character goes a long way
Barber’s talent is undeniable, but let me hit you with just a quick and obvious reminder: She’s only 20 years old and seven fights into her professional career. At this stage, she’s basically undefeated against other young fighters based on natural talent alone.
But still, when you’re that young and that inexperienced, no amount of talent can protect you from showing some weaknesses – especially against the right opponent – and that’s what we saw against Aldrich. We saw Barber getting picked apart with straight punch counters before she managed to turn the tide with one big left hand.
What does a display like this tell us? It shows that Barber has character, and that’s a good sign for her long-term outlook.
The talent, we already know she has that. But in order to make it for a long time in the fight game, character goes a long way. You have to be able to battle back from adversity, because adversity is inevitable no matter how good you are. And if there was ever a time to – shall we say – give yourself the opportunity to endure some adversity, it’s now, at 20 and just seven fights into your career.
From here, it’s all about how Barber responds and being able to recognize that she’s nowhere near where she wants to be. And if she wants to be the youngest UFC champion ever, let that feeling motivate her to shore up the holes in her game so she can get there.
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