UFC flyweight Maycee Barber might be one of the most dangerous women on the planet in her division, but that didn’t stop a “serious stalker” from affecting her career. Barber told MiddleEasy that a stalker situation affected her weight cut early in her career. In fact, the situation was so severe that it required the intervention of a SWAT team.
“I had a pretty serious stalker situation which went on for about two, three years. At the time that I missed weight, that was when he was not in jail and he was somewhere in Denver and I was fighting in Denver so I was [under] super high stress. They had the SWAT after him, the security at the fight had a picture of him and knew, ‘Hey, this is the guy. Nobody lets this guy in.’
SWAT Team Pursues Maycee Barber’s Stalker
That happened during my weight cut so I was really stressed out. That’s not an excuse, I did what I could and I tried to make the weight and I missed the weight so that’s on me and I still wanted that fight so we made it work. But the end of that story is he’s in jail now. He’s being sentenced to like 10 years.”
Barber continued, pointing out that her ordeal was far from unique. Barber reiterated that her stalker impersonated a young girl online. As a result, Maycee Barber avoids interacting with strangers on social media for the most part, even if it might affect her career.
“It’s not just me. Every female athlete is gonna have that. Every female is gonna have that. This world is dark and dirty and I feel like social media has allowed people to just say whatever they want and have no repercussions whatsoever.
I don’t read through messages and it sucks because there’s times where there’s messages from young girls, young people, that are good, but the stalker that I had was impersonating a young girl so it’s hard to really decipher and figure out who is who and what’s what.
So to protect my own self, I just try not to respond at all. I feel like a lot of people are doing the negative stuff to get a reaction and if you give them that reaction it fuels that and they make up this stuff in their mind. But to avoid all the creepers and the gross people, I just can’t respond. I can’t do it anymore.”
