Just a few weeks removed from regaining the UFC women’s flyweight title, Valentina Shevchenko has responded to critics after her trilogy fight against Alexa Grasso came under critique for being ‘boring’.
Valentina Shevchenko and Alexa Grasso made history at UFC 306, becoming the first female trilogy fight to take place in the UFC’s illustrious history.
Despite the trilogy now being completely even at 1-1-1, there is seemingly no interest from the promotion or the fans for a decider fight, and Shevchenko will likely now defend her title against Manon Fiorot.
Valentina Shevchenko responds to UFC 306 critics
After Shevchenko cruised to a unanimous decision win by controlling Grasso on the ground for the majority of the fight, fans online labeled it as boring and lackluster, and even UFC CEO Dana White admitted that after spending $20m to put on the spectacle, he couldn’t let the lackluster fight ‘drive me crazy’.
Former UFC middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya even posted a video of him falling asleep during the fight after seeing ‘Bullet’ come out with a wrestling-heavy game plan.
Ahead of their big fight at the Sphere, Shevchenko noticed a lot of fellow professional fighters picking Grasso to win the trilogy, which she believes is ‘propaganda’.
“Surprisingly for me, many UFC fighters, many pro fighters when they had their picks before our third fight they said Grasso, it was kind of one-sided,” Shevchenko told MMA Fighting.
“I feel like it’s, when (the UFC) constantly over the year, they’re showing the best moments of one fighter and don’t show anything from another fighter, the people don’t watch the full fight they just see the small clips and they just hear and repeat it, this is kind of how propaganda works,” Shevchenko continued.
The 36-year-old went one step further by claiming that there is ‘something wrong with the world’ when fellow fighters can’t recognize a full MMA skillset, and that is one of the reasons why she wanted to show ‘complete domination’.
“I would take it from people who don’t know much about Martial Arts and just want to see a stupid striking (exchanges) when it’s who has a stronger chin… When pro fighters say that, it was like, oh my god, there’s something wrong with this world,” the champion admitted.
Valentina Shevchenko comments on fighting Manon Fiorot next
The aforementioned Fiorot weighed in as a backup for the UFC 306 co-main event, signifying that she will likely be next to fight for the title.
The French female is on a very impressive seven-fight win streak with her last coming against Erin Blanchfield, who many consider to be a future champion in the division.
Despite her rise up the rankings, Shevchenko admitted that she hasn’t been paying attention to ‘The Beast’ as she didn’t want to take focus away from herself.
“I didn’t pay any attention to (Fiorot)… Now I really have time to, first of all, rest and recover and then start to think about what is next and who is next but as I mentioned, I am a fighter, a Mixed Martial Artist, and for me, it doesn’t matter whoever comes, I’m here,” the ‘Bullet’ commented.