Casey O’Neill says a late-night rabbit hole of figure-skating clips, and one run from Olympic champion Alysa Liu, gave her the mindset that carried her back into the UFC after a year and a half on the shelf. In the backstage tunnel before her return fight, she kept repeating one phrase to herself: “fun-maxxing.”
Casey O’Neill Comeback in the UFC
Casey O’Neill tore her ACL in early 2022, which forced her out of a scheduled fight with Jessica Eye at UFC 276 and sidelined her for an extended period. The Scottish-born flyweight, based in Las Vegas, had started her UFC run at 4-0, including a split-decision win over Roxanne Modafferi at UFC 271, before injuries stalled that rise. After additional setbacks and knee surgery, she went through a full year of rehabilitation and was inactive for the entire 2025 calendar year, only booking her comeback against Gabriella Fernandes in early 2026.
O’Neill returned on March 28, 2026, against Gabriella Fernandes at a UFC event in Seattle, her first appearance since August 2024. She fought with urgency, scoring a first-round knockout that immediately put her back in the flyweight conversation and marked a key emotional milestone after repeated injury issues. In post-fight comments, she explained that during the walk to the cage she was not focused on fear or rankings but on one internal instruction: enjoy herself and “fun-maxx” the moment.
Alysa Liu and fun-maxxing
Alysa Liu, a U.S. figure skater, had already lived a full competitive arc: early retirement at 16 after the 2022 Winter Games, then a return to win gold in women’s singles and the team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina. Her comeback and relaxed public attitude sparked new discussion around competing for joy rather than pressure, with creators and analysts using her as an example of “fun-maxxing,” chasing performance through play instead of grind.
Liu’s Olympic success and the framing of her skating as performance driven by enjoyment resonated with athletes in other sports, including O’Neill, who picked up on that language during her own recovery. Alysa Liu has been very clear that her gold in Milan-Cortina came from skating with joy, not chasing a result, and that she would have been at peace even without the medal because of what the comeback meant.
In one breakdown of her mindset, she is quoted saying: “Win and losing [don’t] affect me anymore… medals don’t fulfill me. I skate because I like to skate.” She adds, “I’m happy with any outcome, as long as I’m there. I am present. There’s nothing to lose.”
In the lead-up to Seattle, O’Neill followed Liu’s story and started to reframe her comeback: after months of rehab and doubt, the priority became experiencing the walk, the crowd, and the exchanges in the cage rather than obsessing over outcomes. She described repeating “fun-maxxing” to herself in the tunnel as a way to strip away fear and expectations, crediting that Liu-inspired mantra with helping her fight loose on her first night back.
For O’Neill, the connection is simple: a figure skater who came back for the love of competition gave a UFC flyweight permission to do the same, turning a long injury layoff into a story about returning to the sport on her own terms.