The Film Room: Valentina Shevchenko
UFC 228 is now available on Amazon Prime.
Valentina Shevchenko will step inside the Octagon for her second title bout in less than a year when she takes on flyweight champion Nicco Montano in the UFC 228 co-headliner on Saturday at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. After a decision loss to Amanda Nunes in a failed bid to capture the bantamweight crown, Shevchenko downshifted to 125 pounds and now finds herself a prohibitive favorite against Montano.
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This edition of The Film Room focuses on Shevchenko’s exploits.
Generally, when fighters transition to MMA from kickboxing, they are forced to alter their style in order to adjust to different looks. Shevchenko stands as an exception, having made a seamless transition to mixed martial arts. She is a pure counterstriker and does her best work with her counter lead hook -- a strike she fell in love with during her kickboxing days. In her July 2016 encounter with fellow counterstriker Holly Holm, Shevchenko refused to attack first and caught the Jackson-Wink MMA star with a counter lead hook nearly every time Holm grew frustrated and moved forward sloppily.
Shevchenko has also established herself as the queen of counter spin attacks, which again were born out of her love for kickboxing. Her go-to technique has been the spinning backfist, a difficult-to-master strike she executes with ease. Shevchenko also likes to counter with a turning side kick to the body, similar to fellow UFC 228 competitor Zabit Magomedsharipov. Spin counters are not often seen in MMA, but with the emergence of fighters like Shevchenko and Magomedsharipov, they are becoming more prevalent. However, few time and land them better than Shevchenko.
The only change in Shevchenko’s game from kickboxing to MMA has been how often she is the lead attacker. During her kickboxing career, she would come forward with combinations much more than she has in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Shevchenko understands that most mixed martial artists do not possess the tools necessary to deal with an elite counterstriker, so she limits the amount of times she leads and elects to sit back and wait for opponents to come to her. This was most prevalent in her fight with Holm. When two counterstrikers face off, it can result in a dull fight that sees both combatants patiently waiting for the other to come forward. Shevchenko knew she could outlast Holm, 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.
The most underrated and improved aspect of Shevchenko’s game is her grappling. Just like she is on the feet, Shevchenko is a counter-grappler and only goes for takedowns when opponents overextend and leave their hips open. Despite her striking base, she has dominated fighters like Priscila Cachoeira on the ground and held her own at times in grappling exchanges against the much larger Nunes.
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