UFC 322 takes place this Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and the co-main event features possibly the greatest women’s MMA fight ever assembled: Valentina Shevchenko vs. Zhang Weili
for the women’s strawweight title.
The matchup pits two all-time greats, near the peak of their powers, in a superfight between divisional champions. Sure, Zhang doesn’t technically still have the strawweight title, but everyone knows the score heading into this fight. Champ vs. Champ fights are rare in MMA and even rarer in women’s MMA, and a matchup between the two GOATs of their divisions is unprecedented. So can Zhang become the second female two-division champion in UFC history? Or will Valentina Shevchenko continue her dominance at 125 pounds?
Let’s discuss.
Paths to victory for Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 322
Let’s start here: Shevchenko is the undisputed greatest flyweight of all time, and has a legitimate case to be the greatest women’s fighter to ever step in a cage. With someone like that, it’s safe to say they are good at just about everything, and that’s very true for Shevchenko. She hails from a muay Thai background, and that’s nominally where her bread is buttered, but Shevchenko is the spiritual heir to Georges St-Pierre in that she is a kickboxer but is arguably better as a grappler. Both will come into play here.
The thing about Shevchenko is that her formula for success never changes, just small tweaks. Her superpower is controlling the distance of fights on the feet, and so she will always look to do that at the start, keeping opponents at range and then countering as they try to come in. She then mixes in takedowns from shots and the clinch, where she can bully people from top position.
This plan should work fairly effectively against Zhang, at least, the first phase. Zhang is a willing striker, but not the craftiest. Most of her success on the feet has come against people who are outright bad there, but against rangy kickboxers like Rose Namajunas, she’s struggled. If the UFC was a video game, Shevchenko is the end boss of range management, so simply going with Plan A should make a lot of headway for the champion. Then, it’s a matter of mixing in her own takedowns at opportune moments.
The biggest concern I see for Shevchenko is that she’s become increasingly prone to lapses of concentration, especially while grappling, and so willingly engaging in ground work comes with risk. Shevchenko would be best served by getting back to her feet when taken down, and not playing around with Zhang on the floor, except in dominant positions.
Paths to victory for Zhang Weili at UFC 322
Zhang may not be the undisputed greatest strawweight of all time, but at this point, she is the consensus one, and deserving of her spot on the Mount Rushmore of women’s MMA. Like Shevchenko, Zhang is nominally a kickboxer, but her true strength lies in her ability to mix the martial arts. Zhang’s title reign has been defined by taking her opponents to the phase where they are weakest and using her exceptional physicality to dominate them there. But that’s a tough row to hoe against Shevchenko.
That’s not to say Zhang is without options. While she is probably not “as good” as Shevchenko on the feet, she has some good tools for the matchup, first and foremost, her ability to game plan.
Zhang and her team come into matchups with focused tactical adjustments for each opponent, and those are especially likely to have success against Shevchenko, whose game is pretty bare bones. Alexa Grasso won the title by waiting for Shevchenko to spin, and those sorts of small windows still exist. The biggest one for Zhang, I think, is Shevchenko’s reliance on countering. Because Shevchenko wants to set the distance and then attack the entering fighter, she’s open to counters off her counters, baiting her into throwing and then returning. And as Zhang should be faster, she can find success in this way.
Another avenue to attack is to simply attack. Shevchenko is a notoriously low-volume fighter, and thus, rounds can get tight. Accepting the idea that you may get hit, but walking through to put up more volume can score points with the judges. Manon Fiorot, Taila Santos, and Alexa Grasso all had close fights with Shevchenko in part because they did more stuff than she did for long stretches of the fight. If Zhang doesn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, she’s got a chance to do the same.
Questions
As, in my opinion, the greatest women’s fight ever put together, there are nearly an infinite number of questions heading into this matchup. But for the sake of time, I’m going to focus on the biggest ones that I believe will decide the outcome of the matchup.
- How does Zhang fare moving up to 125? It’s always hard to predict how a shift in weight class will affect a fighter, and much of Zhang’s success can be traced back to her physicality. I do not think she will be overmatched by Shevchenko in this regard, but if she is, or just can’t fall back on it, that’s going to be a huge concern.
- How much does Shevchenko have left? Shevchenko may only be a year older than Zhang, but she’s spent a decade longer in the fight game. Shevchenko has been fighting since 2003! She has 30 MMA fights, over 90 kickboxing bouts, and two boxing bouts. That is so much mileage. It seems clear that Shevchenko has lost at least a little bit off her fastball, but enough to make the difference?
- Has Zhang actually learned to wrestle defensively? Zhang had incredible success against Tatiana Suarez in the wrestling department, but some of that is because Suarez didn’t have other options. Previously, Zhang has struggled in takedown defense against fighters who blend the martial arts well, so can she hold up here?
- Who makes the last adjustment? I strongly suspect this fight is going long, and when it does, how does each fighter adjust? Both women have a deep bag of tools to pull from, and if one is taking over, how does the losing fighter respond? And is there a response to the response? Fights at the very top level of the sport, which this is, always have moves and countermoves. What will they be?
Prediction
This fight feels like a coin flip to me. A few years ago, I would have confidently chosen Shevchenko as the much more well-rounded fighter, with a size advantage. Now, though, Shevchenko is on the decline, and Zhang may not be (she also could be; she, too, is older). That really evens the odds in this one. Still, I can’t help but think of Zhang’s recent success and see that it came against very limited fighters. In Shevchenko, she faces a fighter limited only by her own choices, and that poses a serious problem. I suspect this will be a very close fight, but Shevchenko’s ability to control distance will be the deciding factor.
Valentina Shevchenko def. Zhang Weili via unanimous decision (48-47 x3)
