Michael Bisping thought he’d seen a worst-case scenario when Maycee Barber was laid out at UFC Seattle.
In Saturday’s co-main event, Barber was on the receiving end of a perfect punch from Alexa Grasso that spun her around and immediately put her in position for Grasso to lock in an airtight choke. Referee Mike Beltran rushed in to stop the fight even before Barber went limp in Grasso’s arms.
What followed was a chilling scene as Barber lay on the canvas, her eyes open in seemingly in shock, a camera locked on to her blank expression for an uncomfortable period of time. Fortunately, Barber was eventually able to stand on her own power and has commented on the loss since, though she admitted “I don’t really remember a whole lot. All I know is every time I go on social media I look like I’m dead and that’s not a very fun thing to see.”
Watching UFC Seattle with his family, Bisping echoed those sentiments.
“Right hand spins Maycee Barber, drops down to one knee, locks that up, and then that for several minutes,” Bisping said on his Believe You Me podcast with Paul Felder. “And the eyes weren’t moving. I’m like, ‘Whoa, shut up, shut up. Oh my God. Oh my God. She looks dead. She’s not moving.’”
“It was only after, like, I don’t know a minute or even longer that the eyes started to move a little bit and I was like, ‘She’ll be OK. She’ll be OK,’” he added. “But holy shit, man, that was scary.”
The aftermath felt even more prolonged in contrast to the suddenness of the finish. Officially, the bout lasted a little under three minutes, with Grasso landing the knockout blow around the 2:30 mark, quickly following up with a punch that landed clean on the dazed Barber, and then applying the rear-naked choke.
Even Barber might not have realized the fight was over at first as her body appeared to go on auto-pilot before she collapsed to the mat.
“It was weird, too, because she gets hit, she’s obviously out,” Felder said. “She has no idea what’s going on when she gets put in the choke, so she’s not going to tap. She wasn’t there when the choke started and Beltran did a great job. He didn’t wait for a tap, he wasn’t waiting to see anything, as soon as Grasso put that choke in, he was already running over and stopping it.
“What was crazy is you see her instinct still there a little bit. She kind of comes to, starts wrestling, but then you see her kind of almost fade back out. … It was strange and then was breathing really deeply and laying there. And she’s had some medical things. She had the seizure incident before that fight in the [UFC Vegas 107] main event and never walked [out]. Then I started getting worried, is that what she’s having right now? Did that kind of trigger something in her? She says she’s fine now, she posted on social media, but still, one of the scariest finishes in a long time.”
The loss snapped a seven-fight win streak for Barber, while Grasso picked up her first win in three years. Bisping made sure to give the former flyweight champion her flowers for the memorable finish, suggesting that her days as a UFC contender might not be behind her just yet.
“Fair play to Alexa Grasso,” Bisping said. “She’s dangerous. The last fight, I think it was Natalia Silva, I thought maybe she had her moment in the sun and now it’s kind of fading because Natalia Silva had a really, really good performance against her. But Grasso said she was injured beforehand and this is what I’m capable of when I’m 100 percent, and I’ve got to say that certainly seems like it’s the case… And Maycee Barber has been in there and gone to a decision with her before, and Maycee Barber, yeah she’s had some issues along the way, but she’s had some great fights. Great fights.”
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