Maycee Barber’s return to the Octagon did not go her way.<\/p>\n
In the co-main event of UFC 258, Barber fought Alexa Grasso in her first fight since she lost to Roxanne Modafferi at UFC 246 in a fight she also tore her ACL. Entering the scrap, Barber didn’t think ring rust would be a factor but admits she had a hard time finding her timing in the first two rounds<\/a>.<\/p>\n “You know, more than I thought I was going to. I felt like my camp went great, training was awesome, weight cut went great,” Barber said to BJPENN.com in her first interview since the loss. “But, I didn’t realize how much I would feel my knee in there and think about it. My timing was also off, my range was off. A lot of different things were not what I expected them to be. But, props to Alexa because she had a great gameplan and she did what she needed to do and she got the win.”<\/p>\n Although losing is disappointing for Barber, she admits it was a good learning experience for her. She is only 22-years-old and knows she will come back better than ever but says the loss is a bitter pill to swallow right now.<\/p>\n “I think I need to get punched a couple of times. The third round is when I got back into knowing what I am supposed to be doing. My timing was kind of back. The first and second rounds were kind of spent trying to figure it out… I’m definitely happy with how the third round went and I learned a lot,” Barber said. “Obviously, as soon as I lost I wanted to deal with it. There were no injuries, and I’m healthy so it was a bitter pill to swallow like ‘dang, I didn’t perform, I didn’t do what I felt was going to happen.’ I was a little more bitter, so I didn’t think back about the lessons. Now, I am going to sit down and go through the whole camp, the training, and what I can learn from it.”<\/p>\n