“I love the way she talks,” White told Olivi. “When I say, ‘talks,’ I love the way she texts me and the crazy stuff she says to me. She wants to be a world champion. I love these types of things and these types of people.”
How exactly does a 20-year-old balance this brash persona with patience in her pursuit of the title? In Barber’s eyes, there isn’t really any other way to do it.
“You can’t really be afraid of that because I chose this life, and I’m enjoying it all the time,” Barber said. “You have the good days. You have the bad days. You have the hard days. You have the days where you feel like, ‘Man, I’m on top of the world.’”
Barber said she plans to spend a year fighting at flyweight before moving back down and chasing the strawweight belt currently held by Rose Namajunas. Who holds the belt at that point isn’t certain, especially with Jessica Andrade challenging for the strap at UFC 237. What does seem likely – based as much on her words as her actual performance – is that Barber will be closing in on her opportunity for a title shot.
“If you’re confident and you’re enjoying the process and you realize this is why I’m doing this and this is what I’m going for and this is what’s going to help me help them or help me help my family or my siblings or my future family, I feel like that all together is what makes it worth it.”
UFC: After having some time to digest your first win, seems like you’ve been able to travel some and train in different places. What have you been up to since making your debut?
Maycee Barber: The last few months after my fight in November, I went out and did some testing at the (UFC Performance Institute) and got some good information about where I need to be and what I need to do for the next fights coming up, and after that, I moved to Wisconsin. I’ve been traveling around, yes I have, a lot. I moved to Wisconsin, then I got the fight with JJ Aldrich, and so now I’m back in camp, so I went out to Utah and did some training with Matt Pena, one of my boxing coaches, and then I just continued camp with Marc Montoya at Factory X in Denver, and it’s been huge. It’s been awesome. A lot of training. I haven’t been home. I haven’t seen my family in quite some time, so I’m ready to see my family, but yeah. Florida, I went to the Daytona 500. That was an incredible experience getting to be around all the athletes there and to see the level of mentality that they have as professionals, and that was really cool. And now, I’m here in Vegas for the Jon Jones and Anthony Smith fight and for some media and for some of my own training and continuing camp because obviously Anthony has Marc, and Marc is my head coach as well, so I just kind of had to follow along.
UFC: Your plan after your fight in November was to move to Wisconsin to work on nutrition, and obviously you came to the PI to get information as well. What did you learn?
MB: Being here at the PI, it’s been incredible. The preparation that we’ve had to make and the changes that we’ve had to make are the weight class. I had to move up from 115 to 125. It’s not ideal, but we found out that my metabolism was wrecked, and so we had to make some changes for my health specifically, so that’s what we did. It’s not a perfect world. In a perfect world, I would still be fighting at 115, but I also feel like a beast at 125, and I feel good. I feel strong, and weights coming down. I’m way healthier now. That’s probably the biggest change that we’ve made is the weight class.
UFC: So you’re at 125, is the plan to move back down at some point?
MB: Yeah. So, I’ll probably spend the next year (at flyweight) or so until I’m completely healed. So right now, I’m back out here testing more, and I’m not even halfway back to where we want me to be, so it’s a process. Any time you go and you diet down and you put such stress on your body for dieting and training and as an athlete, however long it took to get there, it’s going to take that much time to get it back, so I have quite a long journey of recovering, and then after that, I’ll definitely go back down to 115.
