Valentina Shevchenko is open to pursuing a second title, but that’s not the only option right now.
On Saturday evening, Shevchenko added another title defense to her résumé, winning a unanimous decision over former strawweight champion Zhang Weili in their superfight at UFC 322. The bout was billed as possibly the greatest women’s MMA fight of all time, but Shevchenko dominated the contest, sweeping the scorecards against her fellow pound-for-pound great, something even she wasn’t expecting.
“I was
preparing for a war,” Shevchenko said in her post-fight press conference. “I even took all my anti-inflammatory pills with me because I didn’t know how I was going to walk out of the octagon. But I feel that as a training camp, and all training that I did in preparation for this fight, it was so hard that it helped me to have a less hard fight. But it was not something that I felt like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be easy,’ something like that. …
“The victory over someone like Weili, it means a lot,” Shevchenko continued. “And it’s not only about the fight, but the preparation for the fight. It was one of the largest, longest, and hardest training camps I ever had. Especially, I felt this morning, I woke up and had the feeling that I just fought in Montreal, and now I have to do it again. It’s so back-to-back for me because training never stopped, and training camp never stopped. That’s why it’s very important. This victory is very important for me.”
The win was Shevchenko’s ninth title defense, setting the record among women for most UFC title defenses, and moving her to fifth all-time on the overall list. It also solidified Shevchenko’s spot atop the women’s pound-for-pound list and added to her argument for the greatest female fighter of all time.
As such, talk quickly turned to the question of whether Shevchenko would move up to pursue a second title, possibly against bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison or Amanda Nunes, who is planning to return and fight Harrison next year. Shevchenko and Nunes have history together, having fought twice before, and Harrison recently laid the foundation for a possible matchup between the two, and Shevchenko is open to either.
“I think it’s one of the possibilities, and I consider that,” Shevchenko said about moving up to bantamweight. “It’s kind of like, for now, I want to take care of injuries that I have, that [have been] kind of migrating from training camp to training camp with me [laughs]. But after maybe a week or something like that, we will have our conversation with my team and my coach, and decide what’s next, because I feel there are good challengers in flyweight as well; Erin [Blanchfield], Natalia [Silva], and bantamweight, now we have Amanda [Nunes] or Kayla [Harrison].
“I would say probably fans would love to see Amanda trilogy because it was unfinished business, but in the same time, it’s unclear yet, is she return or not return? Is she fighting or not fighting? And also, it’s unknown in what shape she’s going to return. Like, half Amanda or maybe full Amanda? Who knows?
“But Kayla is also one of the possibilities, and it’s going to be another super challenge.”
