Barber: Paige Ducked Me, But Got A Better Fight

Maycee Barber wanted to be the one who sent Paige VanZant packing from the UFC, but she won’t get that chance.

Instead, Barber will take on Roxanne Modafferi on January 18th at what may end up being UFC 246/

“They offered it to Paige at 125, (and) she said no,” Barber said on Submission Radio. “From what I heard, she said she wanted a fight at 115, but she would need more time. So, as far as I know, it’s offered to her at 125 when she wants to take the fight at 125. And other than that, it’s kind of like, I’m just gonna keep doing what I do with my career, and when she decides to fight, we’ll fight.”

“My career will be successful no matter what, if I beat her up or not,” Barber said confidently. “That was kind of like a bonus – like, beat her up and prove a point. But that’s it.”

“Roxanne is way better of a fighter than Paige VanZant,” Barber said. “And there’s a lot of women out there who are a tougher fight. Paige VanZant just did the marketing well, and that was because the UFC got behind her on that.

“But like I’ve said multiple times, she didn’t hold up her end of the deal and she didn’t continue to progress as a fighter, she just continued to progress on the more marketing and media side of that. So, yeah, there’s a lot more girls that had been working there their butts off a lot more than Paige has.”

“(Roxanne’s) been there so long within the sport,” Barber said of her January opponent. “She has so many fights. She has like 39 fights. And I don’t know if that includes her amateur career or not. She’s been around for a lot of fights and through a lot of the women in MMA. So, it’s really a very historic fight for us. Because we’re taking someone who has pretty much gone and done and seen it all, and then you have someone who’s been working their whole life just to be where they are right now.

“And I’m super young and super new in my career. So you kind of have the new and the old, and I think people are gonna be shocked. They expect, like, oh, you’re fighting her and she’s got so much experience over you. But what they don’t realize is that I’ve been working my whole life, and I’m 21, but that’s like 17 years of work that I’ve put into this.”

Report: MMA Junkie