Before the final round of promotion had even gone out, the Ultimate Fighting Championship located an excellent replacement to keep a July matchup intact.
Casey O'Neill withdrew from her matchup with Jessica Eye (15-10, 1 NC) on Thursday due to a torn ACL, scuttling their UFC 276 flyweight pairing. That night, BJPenn.com first reported that the promotion had already locked down someone to fight in O’Neill’s stead: Maycee Barber (10-2). On Friday, Barber confirmed the news of this fight on her Instagram, verifying that this battle will take place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on July 2.
Barber comes in with momentum on her side, having won her last two on the scorecards against fellow promising young talents Miranda Maverick and Montana De La Rosa, with the latter coming in April. Those two wins put a pair of defeats in her rear-view mirror, where she fell short to Roxanne Modafferi and sustained an injury that kept her out of action for over a year, and a subsequent effort against Alexa Grasso in February 2021. “The Future” has earned two of her three career decision victories in those last two triumphs over Maverick and De La Rosa, and her overall finish rate fell to 70% as a result.
Cleveland’s Eye will be still looking to right the ship after three consecutive losses – all on the scorecards – to Cynthia Calvillo, Joanne Wood and Jennifer Maia. Dating back to 2019, she has beaten just one foe, when she topped Viviane Araujo after 15 minutes of action. While Barber celebrates a relatively high finish rate for her division, Eye has not recorded a stoppage since 2014, when she fought at bantamweight and blasted open Leslie Smith’s cauliflower ear to force a doctor stoppage.
UFC 276 still has no headliner on the cards, but it does have a destination of Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena. Other than Eye-Barber, significant fights on the billing include an additional flyweight contest when Miesha Tate takes on Lauren Murphy. At middleweight, Uriah Hall will try to blunt the momentum of rising talent Andre Muniz, while Brad Tavares will attempt to do the same against exciting up-and-comer Dricus Du Plessis also in the middleweight division.
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