Preview: UFC 299 Prelims

Women’s Flyweights

#6 WFLW | Maycee Barber (13-2, 8-2 UFC) vs. #4 WFLW | Katlyn Cerminara (18-5, 11-5 UFC)

ODDS: Barber (-205), Cerminara (+170)

Heading into her UFC debut, Barber’s stated goal was to become the youngest champion in promotional history; and while she might have fallen short of the “youngest” part of that equation, she is certainly making a case that she can be champion sooner rather than later. Barber entered the UFC as a 20-year-old strawweight wrecking ball in 2018, and while her frame caused her to move up to flyweight within a matter of months, she kept affirming her dominance at 125 pounds, running over J.J. Aldrich and Gillian Robertson. Barber was slated to face former title challenger Roxanne Modafferi in a clear athletic mismatch to kick off 2020, but it instead turned out to be her first career setback. Modafferi’s veteran skill and savvy allowed her to stay ahead of Barber’s aggression, and “The Future” suffered a major knee injury that would keep her out of action for over a year. Since her return, Barber’s fights have been an entertaining case study in how far physical tools can carry a fighter. After dropping her comeback fight to Alexa Grasso, Barber has rattled off five straight wins. She is no longer as mindlessly dedicated to pressure as she once was and her oeuvre might not be technically pretty, but Barber simply does not give up, absorbing damage, cycling through ideas and—when the moment calls for it—sometimes blitzing forward in attempts to just purely mash her opponents into submission. There have been some messy times against opponents who can match her in sheer physical strength, namely Miranda Maverick and Andrea Lee, but that list has proven surprisingly short. With another win here against Cerminara, Barber will probably find herself one win away from her long-awaited title shot.

Cerminara’s last fight came about a year and a half ago, and the flyweight division has been completely upended in the time since. Heading into that bout against Manon Fiorot, Cerminara had seemingly affirmed herself as the second-best fighter in the division behind then-champion Valentina Shevchenko. Cerminara’s career has been an impressive success story since she was a bit of an afterthought heading into her UFC debut—a late-notice upset of Lauren Murphy at bantamweight in 2016. “Blonde Fighter” had middling success at 135 pounds but found her niche at flyweight, serving as eternal spoiler against fighters that frankly were a lot more interesting. Tall and rangy but not a standout athlete, Cerminara could typically frustrate her opponents by staying at range and throwing out low-powered strikes at a frequent pace. That success marched her right into the woodchipper against Shevchenko, but after that Cerminara went back to her winning ways, even showing some new wrinkles in the process. She was still far from a high-powered finisher, but she showed an increasingly effective ability to sit down on her strikes and do more than simply neutralize her foes. However, that fight against Fiorot, a loss against one of the few fighters able to match her size, does suggest that Cerminara might struggle with the younger athletes who are starting to fill out the flyweight ranks. This fight against Barber serves as a particularly stark test of that theory. Barber is perfectly capable of marching forward and blowing Cerminara’s game wide open, so a one-sided victory for the younger prospect would not be a surprise. Nevertheless, the veteran gets the benefit of the doubt. The messiness of Barber’s game and lack of defense give Cerminara a lot with which to work, so if she can prove capable of outmaneuvering the younger fighter even a bit, it could result in a surprisingly clean decision win. The pick is Cerminara via decision.

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