Former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping believes Maycee Barber isn’t doing herself any favors with her excuses.
Barber suffered her first-ever professional defeat after losing by unanimous decision to Roxanne Modafferi at UFC 246 earlier this month. “The Future” notably tore her left ACL during the fight and had the doctor check on it following the end of the second round.
Barber, however, seemed baffled by that as she felt the doctor gave away her injury to Modafferi. She also added that it made the injury more prominent to herself and that if she saw her opponent get their knee treated, she would have targeted that body part.
Of course, Modafferi didn’t target Barber’s left knee at all. But that didn’t stop Barber from making those comments while her father also claimed that the doctor would be taken to court.
For Bisping, all this is ridiculous as the doctor was simply doing his job and making sure the fighters are healthy enough to continue.
“The doctor’s just doing his fucking job,” Bisping said on his podcast. “If you get an elbow in the face and it’s pouring blood everywhere, and the doctor goes ‘stop, stop, stop, I’m going to take a look at it’ — you can’t go ‘oh, he’s highlighting my cut face!’ It’s tough shit. But you got injured in the fight and it’s his job to say ‘hold on a minute, I need to check that leg.’ Because let’s say it’s really fucking torn and it’s bad, you can call off the fight and say she’s not fit to fight and she’s going to do herself more damage.
“He was looking out for her! I get it, she’s a young fighter, it’s her first loss, she’s not used to dealing with it — but it’s not a good look.”
Barber was a huge betting favorite going into the fight, with many touting her to break Jon Jones’ record of being the youngest-ever champion in UFC history in the future. Although she can still break that record, this defeat was a big setback.
Bisping advised her and her father to deal with the loss and come back stronger rather than continuing to make excuses.
“Just deal with it, accept it, you got beat fair and square by the better person on the day,” Bisping added. “Come back and get them next time. Bitching about this, you’re not going to win any fans in my opinion by doing this.”