Maycee Barber Blames Doctor For Giving Away Injury At UFC 246

Last updated on January 27th, 2020

Barber: Doctor Gave Injury Away

Maycee Barber feels the doctor is partly to blame for her loss to Roxanne Modafferi.

Barber faced Modafferi in a women’s flyweight contest at UFC 246 earlier this month in Las Vegas. “The Future” went into the fight as a huge betting favorite. However, she suffered a unanimous decision defeat in the end.

Things didn’t help when she suffered an ACL tear in her left knee during the fight. Barber was trying to conceal the injury but following the second round, the doctor went in and checked on her knee which gave away the fact that she had a problem.

“I was doing everything I could to disguise the fact that I had been compromised,” Barber told MMA Fighting in a statement. “I feel like the fact that the doctor completely gave away that I was dealing with something. It also made the injury more prominent to me when I was trying to push it out of my head for the fight. Had it been me fighting, if I would have seen the doctor stepping in and checking someone’s knee, that would instantly be the thing that I target.”

The doctor notably told referee Jason Herzog that Barber had a small, partial ACL tear and was fine to continue.

However, Barber feels he should have just asked her whether she could continue or not instead of checking on her and announcing the injury.

”I feel as though the doctor should have come up to me and ask me if I was good, and then listened to my response,” she added. “I personally have never seen anyone sat down in the middle of fight and had a doctor (check) their knee stability, and then proceed to get up and announce to the ref and everyone else there was a small ACL tear and that (the fighter) was ‘fine.’ I knew something in my knee was torn and I wasn’t fine, but I knew that I could be in the fight, and then after the fight was over, I could cry and deal with it.

”There is absolutely no benefit or reason for the doctor to check me if he was going to let me continue, and there most definitely wasn’t a reason to announce the injury and let me continue knowing full well that he had just ‘shown my hand.’”

The 21-year-old is expected to go under the knife in two weeks. She plans on returning to action soon after rehab which will likely take six to nine months.