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Maycee Barber finally got the chance to talk about what happened in UFC 246. She was the biggest favorite to win on the Conor McGregor card that night but busted her ACL - something that the doctor only declared as a "partial tear" before saying "She'll be fine".
She went the distance but when she blew out her knee, that was enough to make it easier work for Roxanne Modafferi to pick up the upset win. It certainly delayed Barber's goals of becoming the youngest UFC Champion, but she spoke in length to MMA Fighting about what went down.
She said that she plans to return in late 2020 after it was revealed that her ACL tear was far more significant than first thought. While she isn't sure who she'll face next, she expressed interest in a rematch with Modafferi:
"Roxanne is a phenomenal competitor, so I don’t doubt she will still be taking care of her business. She and I will cross again, and I’ll have the opportunity to prove to everyone what my team and myself already know.”
She revealed that before this, he had suffered a mid-injury fight against JJ Aldrich, where she injured her thumb before making a spectacular second-round TKO. This case was a bit different:
"I realized that the muscles surrounding my knee were starting to want to protect it. Round two started, and I realized the pain had gotten worse (and the) instability had gotten greater. I don’t remember a lot, but I remember being slow and seeing her jab come and wanting to step back. With that half a second extra of thinking, she caught me with the jab. I still stepped back, but my leg wasn’t there. The stability had left me.
She also expressed disappointment in the Doctor for "giving away" her injury. She said that had she been in Modafferi's position and known about her ACL, she would have actively targeted it to pick up the win.
“I feel like the fact that the doctor completely gave away that I was dealing with something. It also made the injury more prominent to me when I was trying to push it out of my head for the fight.
She was also a bit surprised at how the situation with the Doctor played out. She said that she did the best to keep her injury disguised but ultimately, her leg and brain couldn't connect:
“I personally have never seen anyone sat down in the middle of fight and had a doctor (check) their knee stability, and then proceed to get up and announce to the ref and everyone else there was a small ACL tear and that (the fighter) was ‘fine.’ I knew something in my knee was torn and I wasn’t fine, but I knew that I could be in the fight, and then after the fight was over, I could cry and deal with it."
She does, however, believe that she will bounce back better than ever. She concluded by saying that this is the life she chose and she wants to live every part of it.
