Feel like a breakdown is in order with the Roxanne-Barber fight, and Happy Christmas
Firstly a few things about Barber. She has not beaten a single legit flyweight, Aldrich and Robertson are both former strawweights and Hannah Cifers is closer to atomweight. She’s also really not a great technical or highly skilled fighter, she can’t strike going backwards, is defensively wide open anywhere in a fight and has only basic striking. Her clinch game is all offence and she has shown a poor understanding of position there, not pummelling for underhooks or knowing when to strike or not. In the past she has clearly just outmuscled girls like Cifers who repeatedly got good positions on her and who almost reversed one of her takedown attempts but was too small. Barbers takedown defence is not proven at all and Mallory Martin, who is not a good wrestler by any means, got her down consistently when they fought 2 years ago, and Aldrich also had her falling on her ass repeatedly slipping on strikes. Robertson had a couple of weak clinch attempts that were stuffed but nothing too challenging or conclusive and a lot of her assumptions seemed be getting made due to her training with Askren for a relatively short time.
Barbers power is also a bit questionable, she hits hard no doubt. But I think her power is getting overrated due to girls badly reacting to it. Robertson and Aldrich ate a lot of clean shots and reacted badly, but neither were wobbling or got dropped, they largely broke mentally. Cifers is tiny and may have got TKO’d but actually ate a lot of big shots standing from Barber fine, she was only in trouble when she got cut and made the mistake of going for leg locks and getting herself stuck in a bad position to be ground and pounded. Overall, I think that a lot of favourable match ups vs undersized opponents has really got people overestimating Barbers ability and potential.
In comparison you have Roxy. For a start she’s a girl that’s fought as high as featherweight and has been fighting the best in the division for years. Notably, she is 2 inches taller than Barber with 4 inches of reach. This is the first time Barber will be at either disadvantage and this is her biggest and strongest opponent by far in the UFC. Roxy has upped her strength and conditioning a lot in the last year and I thought it really showed against Shevchenko, who is also very strong in the clinch (watch Shev next fight handle Pudilova). I don’t think she’s that powerful but average strength and a big technique advantage goes a long way. Striking Roxy throws a lot of volume, long and straight up the middle, and with Barbers awful defence she can land on Barber and likely back her up at times. She herself also won’t backdown easily at all like other girls have and marched down Shevchenko, who is a great striker, for minutes at a time until she could get the clinch in their fight. On the ground Roxy should do well. She is a very tricky grappler with solid BJJ and when we saw Barber on her back was vs Martin it wasn’t pretty at all. I expect she’s improved but it was a bad look what she showed there, and Roxy is vicious on top and has nice control, Roxy finishing there wouldn’t be a surprise. Also worth noting that Roxy has been KO’d once and that was via slam against Kaufman in 2010, she won’t be easy to finish and likely takes Barber the distance.
Another thing I think is important to look at though is both of Roxy’s last two fights, people on average people think she did great vs Shev and poorly against Maia. I don’t think she looked significantly worse, the mistake she made was approaching both fights with the same gameplan despite Maia and Shevchenko having vastly different clinch games. Shevchenko in the clinch is offensively minded going strikes and off the Thai plum but this in turn disadvantages her positionally and she ends up giving up underhooks which eventually let Roxy get takedowns. In comparison Maia is all about digging underhooks to control position. Therefore all Roxy’s TD attempts got stuffed and she lost vs Maia but had success against Shev. If you compare Barber to both Maia and Shevchenko, for a start her striking technique is a lot worse and both Maia and Shev’s success was largely off countering. Barber can’t counter well at all so there is a good chance Roxy has quite a bit of success which she couldn’t do in prior fights. Also if you look at Barbers clinch game she is like a less technically sound Shevchenko with more one-shot power. She is all about strikes and not positioning like Maia, which leads me to think there is a good chance Roxy gets TDs as she can find the positions she needs to.
I’m expecting improvements from Barber for sure, but stylistically this isn’t a terrible match up at all for Roxy and a solid step up for Barber so to have her at around -1000 seems crazy. I’d cap Roxy at around +200 and that’s giving Barber a lot of respect.