“She’s in this to truly be the youngest champion in the UFC. Love it or hate it, I don’t care what your opinion is, but when you see her and who she is personally and how she’s driven and what she does, she’s beyond her age in how she sets things up,” Felder says. “We’ve even got some kind of inside competition going with each other, that if I run five miles and post it about it later that night, bet your ass she’ll send me a screenshot of the treadmill saying I did that but I went a little further than you. That’s her mentality.”
By setting the goal to become the youngest champion in UFC history, the 21 year-old Barber created a standard that she has to live up to.
And if you’ve had your eye on “The Future,” she’s definitely held up her end of the bargain since storming onto the scene. Barber, 8-0, has finished four straight opponents, including JJ Aldrich and Gillian Robertson, on her way to cracking the UFC’s women’s top ten flyweight rankings.
Barber is currently tied with Amanda Nunes and Cris Cyborg for the longest knockout streak in women’s UFC history with three. One more knockout victory would give her that record.
On January 18, Barber will look to write her name in the UFC history books when she takes on veteran Roxanne Modafferi at UFC 246.