Valentina Shevchenko once again became the UFC women’s flyweight champion in a historical fight against Alexa Grasso this past Saturday at UFC 306, doing so in not very exciting fashion.
The rivalry between Valentina Shevchenko and Alexa Grasso will go down in the UFC history books with it being the first women’s trilogy in the promotion’s illustrious history.
With their rematch last year at Noche UFC ending in a controversial draw, a trilogy was the only thing that made sense to try and settle the rivalry once and for all and fortunately, it took place on the grandest of stages, at the Sphere.
Israel Adesanya fell asleep during Valentina Shevchenko vs Alexa Grasso
The defending Mexican champion showcased throughout their first two fights that she wanted to try and apply pressure on the former champion, Shevchenko, and even had a lot of success grappling ‘Bullet’.
Despite that, the 36-year-old came into UFC 306 with an entirely different game plan, and that was to relentlessly wrestle Grasso and not give her time and space to make the fight uncomfortable.
Throughout the five-round title fight, ‘Bullet’ Shevchenko landed eight of 12 takedown attempts, controlling on the ground for over 16 minutes of the 25-minute fight.
Unfortunately for the fans in attendance and the ones watching on PPV, it wasn’t considered a very exciting fight, with the majority of it playing out on the ground with Shevchenko not doing much to score a finish and just prioritizing her top position.
One fan who was sent to sleep by the lack of action was Israel Adesanya. ‘The Last Stylebender’ has amassed over 1m subscribers on YouTube, with the majority of his videos being reaction videos to UFC PPV’s.
With New Zealand being 19 hours ahead of Las Vegas, Adesanya would’ve been watching the UFC 306 co-main event at around 4 pm.
In the video, Shevchenko lands the first takedown of the fight and Adesanya commented: “They’re going to be slow, slow-paced, it was a good takedown though.”
Shortly after, the video shows the 35-year-old slumped asleep on his sofa during the middle of the fight.
Diego Lopes claims Alexa Grasso ‘froze’ during huge fight
Grasso’s teammate, Diego Lopes, picked up a win against Brian Ortega in the fight just before hers and went backstage for quick medicals before coming back out and cornering the Mexican.
Reacting to Grasso’s loss, Lopes claimed that the 31-year-old ‘froze’ and wasn’t in the fight.
“I think Alexa froze and wasn’t in the fight tonight. Valentina didn’t do much either. What did she do? She just took her to the ground and tried to control her there. Didn’t do any damage, she didn’t do anything either,” Lopes told the media during the post-fight press conference.
Grasso will likely have to pick up a few wins on the bounce to find herself in another title fight, despite her trilogy with Shevchenko being even at 1-1-1.