UFC 258- Maycee Barber vs Alexa Grasso: Prediction and Analysis

UFC 258 will see an exciting co-main event coming from the Women’s flyweight division. Rising prospect, Maycee Barber, will be returning to the Octagon after her first career loss in January 2020. She makes this return against Alexa Grasso, who is looking to get her first back-to-back win in her UFC career.

This will be a big test for Barber. She declared she wanted to be the youngest UFC champion ever. However, Roxanne Modafferi put her back into her place. Maycee is 8-1 and the UFC still has high hopes for her. Modafferi tore Barber’s ACL, so the long layoff was spent mostly recovering from that. Her upcoming bout will be a test of how well she has recovered from her injury.

Grasso is ranked #15 in the flyweight rankings. This will be just her second fight at flyweight, as she moved up from strawweight after issues with cutting weight got her fight against Claudia Gadelha canceled on weigh-in day.

This is an exciting matchup between a four-year veteran and a contender with championship aspirations. Who wins this one?

UFC 258: Aggression is the key?

Alexa Grasso has seen eight decisions in her last nine fights. She lost that one other fight to Tatiana Suarez by submission. Grasso has never finished a fight in the UFC and is a fighter that can grind out decisions really well. While that is a strategy of its own, it may not work against Barber.

Maycee is the opposite of Grasso in the sense that most of her fights end in finishes. She has had only two decisions across her nine-fight career, with one of them being her decision loss to Modafferi at UFC 246. She pushes the tempo from the opening bell, and Grasso will have to find a way to neutralize her as Modafferi did.

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Grasso is a technical boxer, while Barber is a very powerful kickboxer. Grasso could easily control the range of this fight, but Barber’s reckless advances can make it hard to keep composure. While Barber’s technique is still developing, she already has the gift of power. Grasso hasn’t faced a fighter like Barber before, so this is a tough challenge for the long-time strawweight.

For our prediction, we are going with Maycee Barber. This is set-up as a rebound fight for her. While it could be a tricky matchup, this seems to be the kind of fight where ‘The Future’ Barber starts showing her development as a fighter.