When she looks into her crystal ball, Maycee Barber thinks she’s on a different trajectory than the current UFC titleholder is from here on out.
Coming off a big win at Saturday’s UFC 323, Barber (15-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) is still riding high off the vibes of taking one step closer to a title shot – something she has yet to obtain. Creeping into the title conversation, Barber said a deeper dive study on titleholder Valentina Shevchenko will come. However, as it stands, Barber likes her odds given the future trajectory differences she perceives between the two of them.
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“I was so focused on my fight that I haven’t had time to think about it really,” Barber recently told MMA Junkie Radio. “I see a fighter who has been around for a long time. She’s on the decline, in my opinion. And I’m on the rise. I’m hungry. I am chasing my goals. I’m chasing my dreams, and I’m just hungry for this belt. There’s nothing that’s going to stop me. I don’t care how good she is or how good she thinks she is, I’m coming for it. When I sit down with the team, I’m going to dissect it a lot more. We’ve always paid attention. We’ve always very much been focused on what we need to do. At the forefront, we had to focus on Karine Silva, and that’s what we did.
“Now that we’re done, we can either sit down and focus on the next opponent, or we can sit down and focus on Valentina. She’s beatable. It’s proven that she can be beatable. I don’t think that she’s the same fighter that she was when she first started. I also believe that I’m not the same fighter I was when I first started. I’ve gotten so much better, and I do believe I’m in my prime and that I am coming into a spot where I’m unbeatable.”
Barber says it’s less about Shevchenko’s age and more about her own progress. Since the back-to-back loss outings she turned in 2020-21, Barber has rattled off seven-straight victories, including former UFC title challengers Katlyn Cerminara and Jessica Eye. Now more than ever, she feels ready for the biggest challenges available.
“I think that she’s just getting older, as well,” Barber said. “It’s not necessarily that she’s not as good of a fighter. She’s just getting older. I think there are other things that play into a factor. It’s not just, ‘Oh, she’s just not good.’ She’s just as good. She’s just as technical. She just has the same I.Q. There are other things that play a factor. It’s also less about her and more about me. I’ve gotten better, and I’ve improved a lot in my game, and I’ve improved in the striking, the wrestling, the grappling. I’ve improved speed-wise. I’ve improved mentally and physically. There are so many more aspects where I feel like I have the advantage, and I just feel like I’m coming into that time where she’s on the way out, and I’m on the way in.”
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Shevchenko, 37, has largely dominated the women’s flyweight division since its inception in 2018. She most recently fought in November when she defeated Zhang Weili by unanimous decision. The immediate next challenge for Shevchenko is unclear, though multiple frontrunners have emerged, including Natalia Silva and Erin Blanchfield.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC’s Maycee Barber views Valentina Shevchenko ‘on the decline’
