Issue 191

July 2020

Valentina Shevchenko shot to the top of the UFC Flyweight division, but what she really wants is a rematch with Amanda Nunes to prove she's top gun at two weights.

Although the UFC women’s flyweight division is not even three years old, Valentina Shevchenko has built a legacy that will be hard to surpass.

The current champion has held the belt for over 550 days with a title reign that extends back to UFC 231 in December 2018. That night, Shevchenko defeated her longtime rival Joanna Jedrzejczyk via unanimous decision to capture her first UFC title after a dominant performance where she clearly won four of the five rounds.

Having the title wrapped around her waist at UFC 231 brought the dawn of a new era that has since seen her defend it three times (including one knockout and one TKO) against Jessica Eye, Liz Carmouche and Katlyn Chookagian. Shevchenko’s dominance at 125-pounds has drawn comparisons to Jedrzejczyk’s run as the ‘Strawweight Queen’ and even Ronda Rousey’s record of six straight title defenses during the early days of women competing in the UFC.

Despite fighting once already this year at UFC 247 in February, the combination of a serious injury and the COVID-19 global pandemic have put Shevchenko on the sidelines since. It has been both a challenging and frustrating time for the champion and speaking recently to Fighters Only, she described what life has been like since her third UFC flyweight title defense.

“It’s been one of the hardest times of my career,” Shevchenko said. “Having to deal with this [COVID-19] at the same time as my injury has been really difficult. The surgery and rehabilitation have been the harder of the two to manage, but for six weeks I’ve had to reduce my training and I couldn’t do anything. It was totally inactive time and for a fighter, there is nothing worse. In the middle of May, I was able to slowly get back to my training and do some upper body work and exercise. I still wasn’t able to do much leg exercise, but I could at least do something.”

Following her win at UFC 247, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation handed Shevchenko a six-month medical suspension. At the time, no details were released as to why she’d been handed such a long term, but she revealed that she’d aggravated a knee ligament that would later prove further problematic in a training session not long after the fight. 

“The injury partially occurred during my last fight with Katlyn Chookagian, but there was an incident in training that happened after which made me get surgery,” Shevchenko explained. “I was doing some drill in training and I just turned at the wrong angle. It was my MCL. The doctors told me that it could heal by itself, but they advised I should get the surgery because of the sport I do. It should make me better for the long term.

“I had that surgery back in March,” she continued. “At around June time I think the ligament will have healed and not long after that, I should be able to go back to normal, hard training. From there I honestly don’t know how long it is going to take to get back to competition shape. I think a few months more should do it.”

Based out of Las Vegas, Shevchenko had the revolutionary UFC Performance Institute on her doorstep to aid her recovery. The UFC PI was opened back in May 2017 with the ambition of delivering the best quality facilities for all fighters on the UFC roster and the 30,000-square foot facility has since hosted over 80 percent of the roster with one-third using it on an ongoing basis. Shevchenko falls into the latter group and cannot speak too highly of the staff who have aided her recovery since her knee surgery.     

“The UFC offered me the opportunity to use one of the best specialists here in Las Vegas at the UFC Performance Institute,” Shevchenko said. “Three times a week I’ve been having an hour physio session with Heather Linden. She’s incredible. Before, when I’ve had physical therapy, it’s been almost just like having a nice massage, but now I understand that physical therapy can be like torture.

“I’ve been out in Las Vegas now for two and a half years,” she continued. “Before, I was living out in Houston, Texas, but we relocated our base to Vegas because of all the amazing facilities there. The UFC PI has everything you need on site. I do my training camps there now because I can do all my training and recovery in one place.”

With her recovery going well, the question on everybody’s lips is when she might be able to return to defend her title. Shevchenko was originally booked to face Joanne Calderwood at UFC 251 on June 6, but with the injury forcing her out of the fight, there has been no talk since about when or if that fight will be rescheduled. The fight with Calderwood still appears to be the fight to make, but for the minute the champion is just focused on one thing. 

“I think my next fight will be Joanne Calderwood but I’m yet to talk to the UFC about any potential dates,” Shevchenko said. “There’s no sense for me to rush back. I need to make sure my body is healed and that I can return at my best. I also don’t want to come back for that one fight and get injured again and undo all the hard work of my rehabilitation. The timing is key. I think the end of August or September is realistic at the moment.”

Calderwood is currently ranked number three in the UFC women’s flyweight rankings and has won three of her last four fights. Like Shevchenko, the Scot struggled fighting in a different weight class until the UFC introduced its 125-pound division, but she now looks at home and settled at flyweight.

Coming off the back of a win over Andrea Lee last September, Calderwood is still expected to challenge the champion for the title when she’s ready to return. It’s a challenge that Shevchenko welcomes, but she admits she will wait until the fight is booked to do her homework on Calderwood.

“She’s a really experienced and strong fighter who has shown a lot of improvements,” Shevchenko said. “I can tell she works incredibly hard as well and I know she will be doing everything possible to give me a really tough fight. Right now though I have to just focus on myself and I’ve not even begun studying her. It doesn’t make sense. I only really start training for a particular opponent when I’m in camp. The UFC could give me any opponent. It doesn’t matter. I just focus on making myself better and I’m always prepared by the time the fight comes around.”

Mixed martial arts was one of the first major global sports to return following the COVID-19 global pandemic with UFC 249 taking place on May 9 in Jacksonville, Florida. Like everyone around the world, Shevchenko was in awe of the action and glued to the TV screen taking in the unique spectacle of the event taking place behind closed doors with no crowd.

Whilst most found the lack of crowd noise and thudding sound of punches and kicks landing on flesh somewhat eerie, Shevchenko doesn’t believe the experience would’ve been that much different from a fighter’s perspective.

“I’m so happy the UFC is back,” Shevchenko said. “People having live sports is huge. Yes, having the arenas makes it all very different, but I think there are some good aspects to it. The fighters don’t have to do all of the media obligations like the open workouts before the fight. I can imagine that the fighters are more concentrated and focused, but at the same time, I don’t think it will make that much difference.

“I’ve fought all over the world in different conditions and the one thing that’s been consistent is that when you’re in there, you feel like you are all on your own. Once you’re in the cage it’s all the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a big venue or small venue, when you’re in the cage it’s just you and your opponent. I’m sure in the empty arena it’s a little different as you will be able to hear your opponent breathing and maybe the commentators, but for me, I can’t imagine it’s much different from a normal fight.”

The concept of ‘Fight Island’ would have been inconceivable to us all earlier this year, but it is very much real. The UFC is expecting to hold events there as early as June with fighters outside of the United States being flown in from all over the world. Details about Fight Island remain vague, but the opportunity to compete there is something Shevchenko wouldn’t be able to turn down, injury permitting.

UFC President Dana White has stated that everything a fighter could need during fight week is being constructed on the island and that the fighters will be allowed to stay on the island before and after their fights to train.

“I don’t know how long all these isolation and quarantine measures are going to be in place and when we are going to be able to get back to holding normal events,” Shevchenko said. “I hope it will be by the end of the summer and that we will back on our normal schedule by then. For me though, it doesn’t matter where I fight, I just want to fight.

“I would love to compete on Fight Island,” she continued. “I think it’s such an interesting idea. It would be such an adventure to step into the unknown and fight there. The UFC is apparently building everything us fighters would need. It sounds very exciting and as long as I get to fight I’m happy.”

Fighting and martial arts have been a way of life for Shevchenko ever since she started Taekwondo at the age of five. The Kyrgyzstani-born Peruvian built up an incredible multi-discipline record across kickboxing, Muay Thai and boxing before entering MMA and is most widely renowned as a standup fighter. This is an assumption that Shevchenko believes to be inaccurate as she has been training all aspects of martial arts throughout her career. As her UFC career continues, she expects that opinions will change and that her all-round game will be given more respect.

“I was never just a striker,” Shevchenko said. “People would see me competing in multiple different forms of standup fighting and they just assumed that was all I knew. This is all I wanted to show, but it didn’t mean I was just a striker. You need to be more than that to compete in MMA. I knew I had to learn the ground game very early on. When I was growing up, I did everything. My coach always told me that I had to be good everywhere and be a universal fighter, so that’s how I trained. I think people are just confused between what I showed them and what I was actually doing. Now I’m in the spotlight in the UFC I’m showing them my full skillset.”

Before the UFC introduced its flyweight division, Shevchenko competed five times at bantamweight under the UFC banner and held a winning 3-2 record. However, despite impressive wins over Sarah Kaufman, Julianna Pena and former champion Holly Holm, Shevchenko believes she was never really able to show her full range of skills until she made the move back down to flyweight where she’s now fighting opponents of a similar size.

Building her legacy as the most dominant UFC flyweight champion remains her focus for the time being, but if the offer is right, a return to 135-pounds remains a possibility.

“At the moment I just want to defend my belt as much as I can,” Shevchenko explained. “125-pounds is my perfect weight. Fighting at bantamweight is a lot harder and I’ve previously fought there because there’s really been no other option. Everyone is bigger and taller than me with longer reach. It didn’t affect me that much because I was successful, but flyweight is perfect for me and I can show much more in the fights.

“Defending my belt is my priority, but who knows what is around the corner? I’m a person who takes all the chances that come my way. If it’s something good for me I won’t turn it down.”

The one thing that would tempt Shevchenko back up to bantamweight would be a trilogy fight with Amanda Nunes. The Brazilian currently holds two wins over Shevchenko but both fights were incredibly close and many believe Shevchenko won their last fight which went to a split decision at UFC 215.

There’s been no talk yet of a third fight between the two, though if both champions remain dominant in their respective divisions, a third showdown will be inevitable. Shevchenko knows it has all the makings for one of the biggest women’s fights in UFC history, but if it’s going to happen, it’s going to be on her terms.

“It’s been quite a while now since I fought Amanda, but the more time passes, the more I believe I won that last fight,” Shevchenko reasoned. “I know it, she knows it, everyone knows it. I won. I know I can’t change the past so I have to look to the future and we need to have this third fight. The fans still want to see it and it will happen. I don’t know when or under what circumstances, but when it happens everything has to be fair. It has to be at the right time, in the right place, and under the right conditions. It would be a big deal.”