UFC has a problem marketing female athletes ever since Ronda Rousey left the picture. This is in part due to the fact that a big part of the female mixed martial artist population is involved in same sex relationships and not really willing to engage audiences with their sex appeal.
Amanda Ribas, Maycee Barber and Miesha Tate are the three commonly cited favorites of the predominantly male audience that watches UFC.
Barber started very young in UFC and was initially given the push despite a belt faking incident she was a part of early in her BJJ career.
Barber won Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018, earning a chance in the promotion. Barber was 19 going at 20 at the time.
Barber’s record consists of 11 wins and 2 losses – she lost to veterans Roxanne Modafferi and Alexa Grasso in consecutive outings. Barber suffered a knee injury in clash with Modafferi. But something else was also happening behind the scenes that was preoccupying her attention.
Barber told MiddleEasy,
“I had a pretty serious stalker situation which went on about 2-3 years. At the time when I missed weight, that was when he was not in jail and he was somewhere in Denver, I was in Denver so it was super high-stress.”
“They had the SWAT after him, the security at the fight had a picture of him and knew this is the guy to not let in… The end of that story is he’s in jail now. He’s being sentenced to like 16 years.”
Barber is unfortunately not the first UFC athlete that has experienced stalking. Georges St-Pierre recently acknowledged that stalkers had gone to his parents’ house in an effort to find him.
Of course this is considerably less disturbing in a case of an adult male MMA champion than a strawweight prospect barely out of her teens.
Barber last competed against Jessica Eye in July of 2022. Barber’s career after the knee injury lost a lot of steam with her picking up consecutive decision wins against Miranda Maverick, Montana De La Rosa and Eye.