The Film Room: Valentina Shevchenko
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Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s flyweight titleholder Valentina Shevchenko will return to the Octagon this Saturday for her second title defense, as she takes on Liz Carmouche in the UFC Fight Night 156 main event in Montevideo, Uruguay. Shevchenko already ranks among the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport, and at just 31 years of age, she has plenty of time to prove herself as one of the greatest of all-time. A win over Carmouche would allow Shevchenko to avenge a September 2010 defeat and perhaps move her one step closer to another rematch with Amanda Nunes.
Shevchenko steps into the spotlight in this installment of The Film
Room.
Shevchenko’s style is simple but difficult to deal with and forces opponents to fight her fight. Holm was the first example of this happening, followed by Joanna Jedrzejczyk. “Joanna Champion” is at her best when she can slowly plod forward with quick combos from head to toe -- a tactic for which most strikers have no answer. Against Shevchenko, she was forced to leap forward with single strikes and slapping leg kicks that were routinely countered.
Shevchenko is also one of the few people in all of combat sports who can routinely land spinning counterattacks. For fighters to have success with normal counters, they must possess incredible timing and ability to read opponents to know what is coming before it is even thrown. However, spinning counterattacks require more time and space to land cleanly, and Shevchenko might be the only female in MMA with the reading ability to create enough space to connect with them. In her kickboxing and muay Thai days, she favored the counter spinning back kick to the body, but recently she has fallen in love with a counter spinning backfist.
Although she rarely works on the lead in MMA and her biggest weakness remains a lack of urgency, we have examples from her kickboxing and muay Thai career that show she can be effective on the lead with brief combos that are generally capped off with a kick. Since her counters are so effective in MMA, it is smart of her to limit how often she leads, but in both fights with Nunes, Shevchenko’s patience was her undoing. Her go-to leading attack is a simple 1-2 down the middle topped off with a lead hook as she exits the pocket.
As a muay Thai competitor, Shevchenko would routinely duck under strikes to initiate the clinch and dump the opponent to the ground Saenchai style. Since there is no ground grappling in muay Thai, this is done to score points and reset the action, but in MMA, she can use this skill to break up her striking and add another threat to her game. Shevchenko’s striking rates far above anyone else’s in the division, and since Carmouche can be overly aggressive and flail forward with sloppy hooks and takedown attempts, expect her to be running into counters all night long.
Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s flyweight titleholder Valentina Shevchenko will return to the Octagon this Saturday for her second title defense, as she takes on Liz Carmouche in the UFC Fight Night 156 main event in Montevideo, Uruguay. Shevchenko already ranks among the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport, and at just 31 years of age, she has plenty of time to prove herself as one of the greatest of all-time. A win over Carmouche would allow Shevchenko to avenge a September 2010 defeat and perhaps move her one step closer to another rematch with Amanda Nunes.
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Shevchenko is one of the most decorated strikers to ever transition
to MMA, and she has perfectly translated her skills from kickboxing
to success in the cage. She understands that most mixed martial
artists do not possess the tools necessary to deal with an elite
counterstriker, so she limits the number of times she leads and
elects to sit back and wait for opponents to come to her. Her go-to
is a simple counter lead hook, and she has the timing and
understanding of angles to land it with ease in MMA. Against a
fellow counterstriker in Holly Holm, Shevchenko knew she could
outlast Holm on the counter, refused to lead outside of a few
exchanges and waited for “The Preacher’s Daughter” to grow
impatient, abandon her game plan and move forward, thus opening
herself to the counter lead hook.
Shevchenko’s style is simple but difficult to deal with and forces opponents to fight her fight. Holm was the first example of this happening, followed by Joanna Jedrzejczyk. “Joanna Champion” is at her best when she can slowly plod forward with quick combos from head to toe -- a tactic for which most strikers have no answer. Against Shevchenko, she was forced to leap forward with single strikes and slapping leg kicks that were routinely countered.
Shevchenko is also one of the few people in all of combat sports who can routinely land spinning counterattacks. For fighters to have success with normal counters, they must possess incredible timing and ability to read opponents to know what is coming before it is even thrown. However, spinning counterattacks require more time and space to land cleanly, and Shevchenko might be the only female in MMA with the reading ability to create enough space to connect with them. In her kickboxing and muay Thai days, she favored the counter spinning back kick to the body, but recently she has fallen in love with a counter spinning backfist.
Although she rarely works on the lead in MMA and her biggest weakness remains a lack of urgency, we have examples from her kickboxing and muay Thai career that show she can be effective on the lead with brief combos that are generally capped off with a kick. Since her counters are so effective in MMA, it is smart of her to limit how often she leads, but in both fights with Nunes, Shevchenko’s patience was her undoing. Her go-to leading attack is a simple 1-2 down the middle topped off with a lead hook as she exits the pocket.
As a muay Thai competitor, Shevchenko would routinely duck under strikes to initiate the clinch and dump the opponent to the ground Saenchai style. Since there is no ground grappling in muay Thai, this is done to score points and reset the action, but in MMA, she can use this skill to break up her striking and add another threat to her game. Shevchenko’s striking rates far above anyone else’s in the division, and since Carmouche can be overly aggressive and flail forward with sloppy hooks and takedown attempts, expect her to be running into counters all night long.
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