My girl @MayceeBarber
is up the same night as me!
#ufc276 https://t.co/cP7yDgYrLN— Jessy Jess (@missjessyjess)
April 29, 2022
Before the final round of socialing had even gone out, the Ultimate Fighting Championship located an
excellent replacement to keep a July matchup intact.
Casey
O’Neill
withdrew from her matchup with Jessica Eye
(15-10, 1 NC) on Thursday due to a torn ACL, scuttling their
UFC
276 flyweight pairing. That night,
BJPenn.com first reported that the promotion had already locked
down someone to fight in O’Neill’s stead: Maycee
Barber (10-2). On Friday, Barber confirmed the news of this
fight on her
Instagram, verifying that this battle will take place at the
T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on July 2.
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Barber comes in with momentum on her side, having won her last two
on the scorecards against fellow promising young talents Miranda
Maverick and Montana
De La Rosa, with the latter coming in April. Those two wins put
a pair of defeats in her rear-view mirror, where she fell short to
Roxanne
Modafferi and sustained an injury that kept her out of action
for over a year, and a subsequent effort against Alexa
Grasso in February 2021. “The Future” has earned two of her
three career decision victories in those last two triumphs over
Maverick and De La Rosa, and her overall finish rate fell to 70% as
a result.
Cleveland’s Eye will be still looking to right the ship after three
consecutive losses – all on the scorecards – to Cynthia
Calvillo, Joanne Wood
and Jennifer
Maia. Dating back to 2019, she has beaten just one foe, when
she topped Viviane
Araujo after 15 minutes of action. While Barber celebrates a
relatively high finish rate for her division, Eye has not recorded
a stoppage since 2014, when she fought at bantamweight and blasted
open Leslie
Smith’s cauliflower ear to force a doctor stoppage.
UFC 276 still has no headliner on the cards, but it does have a
locked-down destination of Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena. Other
than Eye-Barber, significant fights on the billing include an
additional flyweight contest when Miesha Tate
takes on Lauren
Murphy. At middleweight, Uriah Hall
will try to blunt the momentum of rising talent Andre Muniz,
while Brad
Tavares will attempt to do the same against exciting
up-and-comer Dricus Du
Plessis also in the middleweight division.