Maycee Barber is going to do eveything in her power to make sure Mark Smith is not the referee in the biggest fight of her career this Saturday.
Barber looks to avenge the last loss of her career when she faces Alexa Grasso in a rematch at UFC Seattle this Saturday. The flyweight bout serves as the co-main event. Since the UFC 258 decision loss to Grasso in February 2021, Barber has won all seven of her octagon bouts.
It was the most recent fight that left Barber scratching her head. After missing nearly two years due to a health scare, Barber returned at UFC 323 this past December and picked up a win over Karine Silva. During the fight, Barber got blasted with an illegal upkick on the ground. Referee Mark Smith called it a “glancing blow” and ordered Barber to make a decision if she wanted to keep fighting, which led her to tell MMA Fighting in a past interview that she “doesn’t feel safe in there” with Smith as the referee.
Three months later, Barber is set to return and was asked if Smith would be the referee for her fight with Grasso.
“I sure as hell hope not,” Barber told MMA Fighting. “I am going to personally request that he is not the ref for my fight. I will personally throw an upkick, and if he DQ’s me, then I will personally file a complaint.
“No, I’m just kidding, but I will request that he’s not my ref. I don’t know [who the ref is] but thank you for reminding me to ask for him to not be my ref.”
Since the loss to Grasso, Barber has gone 7-0 inside the octagon, while Grasso, the former flyweight champ, enters a pivotal crossroad on a two-fight skid following dominant decision losses to Valentina Shevchenko and Natalia Silva.
Even though the first fight happened five years ago, Barber was able to take away some very key points that she can use to her advantage in the octagon this Saturday night.
“The only things that I’ve taken away from that fight is that, No. 1, is that she was the better fighter that night, and, No. 2, is that she does not want to fight that girl that I was in the third round again because the fighter that she fought in the third round was the true fighter that I am,” Barber explained. “The girl she fought in the first two rounds, I don’t even recognize that person. I watched that fight back and I was like, ‘Who in the world was that?’ I didn’t even know who that was, and I was like, ‘What was I doing shadowboxing in those first two rounds?’ I laughed at myself. I’m like, what was that?
“To be honest, I was working with a team that literally had me for the entire camp, had me shadowboxing. It was the whole plan. They were like, ‘Do me a favor and just shadowbox.I want you to shadowbox in the rounds. I want you to punch the air, we want you to punch the air.’ And I was like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ That was part of the plan, was to punch the air, and I tried so hard for that fight to follow the plan, and I realized, I’m like, ‘That’s not me, like that is not me.’
“And when I realized that, I didn’t have success in that fight, I’m like, ‘I need to just say ‘F it and be me.’ And so in the third round when I said F it and be myself, that’s when I had success, and so that’s also when Grasso realized like, ‘I don’t want to fight that girl,’ and so had that been a five-round fight, I would have had way more success than than I did in a three-round fight.
“Also, I think that she got a taste of it, and I don’t think she liked it, and I’m excited to bring that back.”
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