Preview: UFC 323 Prelims

Women’s Flyweights

Maycee Barber (14-2, 9-2 UFC) vs. Karine Silva (19-5, 5-1 UFC)

BETTING ODDS: Barber (-192), Silva (+160)

Barber came to the UFC through the Contender Series in 2018 as a highly confident 20-year-old who often stated her goal of becoming the promotion’s youngest-ever champion, and she got the requisite level of push to potentially meet that goal. Barber’s frame quickly necessitated a move up from strawweight to 125 pounds, where she continued to look impressive in bullying opponent after opponent. However, her first major test, a 2020 bout against Roxanne Modafferi, went about as disastrously as possible. Despite being an inferior athlete, Modafferi had the veteran wiles to stay ahead of Barber’s brutish approach. Barber tore up her knee in the process, winding up on the shelf for over a year. Her return fight against Alexa Grasso was another loss that at least showed some silver linings. Barber’s best attribute beyond her physicality might be her feel for when to turn up the pressure, and she nearly completed a massive comeback on the back of her aggression in the third round. Barber eventually got back in the win column with a controversial decision against fellow young powerhouse Miranda Maverick, and from there, she reeled off five more wins while looking slightly improved as a fighter. There’s a bit more technique to her game, but Barber is still generally at her best as a bruiser who knows the right moments to lay it onto her opponents. A March 2024 victory over Katlyn Cerminara seemed set to finally vault Barber into the main event scene, but she has been dealing with severe and often unexplained medical issues in the year and a half since. The situation seemed to finally be under control ahead of her slated May headliner against Erin Blanchfield, but Barber looked in poor shape while missing weight on the scale, then suffered a seizure moments before her walkout that scrapped the fight entirely. At this point, anything about Barber’s career going forward has to be considered a question mark, including whether or not she even makes it to this fight against Silva.

Silva shot up the rankings at the start of her UFC career, which was a bit of a surprise. “Killer” looked like the type of one-dimensional submission hunter who often flops on a greater stage, and she seemed lucky to score one of those submission wins while getting outwrestled on the Contender Series in 2021. However, Silva proved to be too tricky for her opposition to handle early on, and after a series of quick submission victories, she’s now a regular in the UFC's rankings, even if her performances have started to come back to earth. The finishes have dried up for Silva in her last three fights, resulting in some ugly fights where Silva keeps trying to make things happen with little in the way of excitement. That still managed to get her past Ariane Lipski da Silva and Dione Barbosa, but she gassed out in fairly spectacular fashion against Viviane Araujo. Barber’s doggedness and physicality should be enough to cause a similar type of implosion from Silva, assuming the American shows up in anything close to her previous form. That’s a major assumption, but the pick is still Barber via decision.

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