UFC Vegas 107 star Maycee Barber has long had high hopes for her career.
Barber broke onto the scene at just 20 years of age, earning a contract on Dana White’s Contender Series before winning her first three UFC fights via TKO.
At that time, ‘The Future’ was being widely tipped to live up to her moniker and rise all the way to the top as an undefeated fighter.
It wasn’t just portions of the fanbase and members of her team making such claims. High in self-belief, Barber admitted that she’d made a bold assertion to the UFC president regarding her star power.
“I told him that I was gonna be as big, if not bigger than Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey and all of the stars he has,” Barber told MMA Fighting. “And I am one of his next big stars.”
Comparisons between Barber and Rousey were already flying around, and the former made a stir when she claimed to be “a new breed of athlete” compared to the former bantamweight champion.
But the journey toward the likes of ‘Rowdy’ and ‘Notorious’ quickly ran into a brutal barrier.
Maycee Barber’s hopes for Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey-esque stardom took a hit against Roxanne Modafferi
After comfortably getting past Hannah Cifers, JJ Aldrich and Gillian Robertson, Barber was matched against Roxanne Modafferi.
‘The Happy Warrior’, a veteran of MMA who had won just two of her four fights after missing out on becoming the inaugural UFC women’s flyweight champion, was widely expected to be soundly defeated. But the now-retired Delaware native shocked the combat sports world.
Modafferi laid down a beating on Barber in an unexpectedly bloody affair at UFC 246. Making matters worse for ‘The Future’ was the fact that she suffered a torn ACL during the loss.
With Modafferi having entered the cage in Las Vegas as a +550 underdog, the result marked one of 2020’s biggest upsets and stalled Barber’s planned surge to stardom.
Maycee Barber’s latest setback came on the scale
In the years since, the 27-year-old has been able to work her way back to being a highly touted name at 125 pounds.
Six straight wins since Barber’s loss to Alexa Grasso have helped in that pursuit and left her as the No. 5-ranked women’s flyweight contender.
With that in mind, Saturday’s UFC Vegas 107 event looked set to present an opportunity for Barber to stake her claim for a first title shot.
But talk of a victory over Erin Blanchfield putting her at the top of the pile slowed when Barber missed the mark on the scale at Friday’s weigh-ins.
The weight mishap was likely music to the ears of Natalia Silva, whose claim to the next opportunity at Valentina Shevchenko will likely be cemented even if Barber emerges victorious inside the Apex.