Maycee Barber is coming back, and the UFC didn’t hand her a soft landing. The promotion announced Wednesday that Barber (15-3) will face Carli Judice (7-2) in a flyweight bout at UFC 335 on Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Aaron Bronsteter and Nolan King both posted the booking on X within minutes of each other, citing a UFC release.
The same release added a light heavyweight fight between Quentin Pasley (4-0) and Junior Tafa (7-6).
Barber hasn’t fought since Alexa Grasso flattened her, a knockout punch followed by a choke attempt on a fighter who was already gone. MMA Fighting called it one of the year’s most brutal finishes, and nobody who watched it is arguing. The timing made it worse. Barber had won seven straight and was knocking on the door of a title shot before the former champion shut it on her. She sits at No. 8 in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings.
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Judice is the kind of opponent you don’t pick if you’re trying to ease somebody back in. She’s won four in a row, and three of those ended early, with knockouts of Jeisla Chaves, Nicolle Caliari and Yuneisy Duben. Her path to the UFC was a strange one, too. The fighter they call Crispy got her contract off Dana White’s Contender Series in 2023 even though she lost a narrow split decision to Ernesta Kareckaite on the show. White saw something in a loss. Four straight wins later, he looks right.
She’s also apparently become a measuring stick. In MMA Fighting’s ranking of this year’s Contender Series class, published Thursday, the comp listed for former ONE Muay Thai champion Smilla Sundell was “Less athletic Carli Judice.” That’s a strange compliment to receive secondhand, but a compliment all the same.
The booking also closed one door. Casey O’Neill had been eyeing Barber, and she posted on X the same day the fight dropped: “I wanted to fight maycee early next year, now I guess we wait and see what’s next 👀”
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UFC 335 is loaded. Charles Oliveira and Diego Lopes headline for the BMF lightweight title, Sergei Pavlovich meets Alex Pereira, Joe Pyfer faces Bo Nickal, and Brandon Moreno takes on Charles Johnson. Pasley, a fresh Contender Series signee, gets Tafa in his debut. MMA Fighting graded Pasley a four-star prospect, said he’ll probably win, and compared him to a young Jon Jones, which is a lot of weight to hang on a guy with four pro fights.
My take: I like this fight a lot, and I like that it scares me a little on Barber’s behalf. The last thing anyone saw her do was get stopped cold, and her first assignment back is a hitter with three knockouts in her last four wins. If Barber’s chin and nerve are intact, beating Judice gets her right back into the title conversation she was in before the Grasso fight. If they aren’t, Judice becomes the hottest name at 125 pounds overnight. Either way the matchmakers booked a real fight on Dec. 12, and the flyweight division gets an answer.
