Given that UFC champions have turned up in action franchise a couple times in recent years, it’s surprising that flyweight queen Valentina Shevchenko hasn’t been tapped to play a member of some international intelligence agency helping Dom Toretto and the Fast crew on their latest caper or been called up to dance with 007, literally and figuratively.
The 33-year-old superstar, who returns to action this weekend, defending her title against top contender Lauren Murphy in the co-main event of UFC 266 at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night in Las Vegas, is basically a Hollywood espionage character come to life — a certified bad-ass that speaks multiple languages, knows how to handle a firearm, looks great in an evening gown, and can move on the dance floor.
She’s Bond, Jane Bond, and it’s honestly kind of surprising she’s not an even bigger star than she is currently.
Undefeated in seven fights since moving to the 125-pound weight class, Shevchenko won the title in her second appearance at flyweight and has successfully defended it five times, which ties her with Amanda Nunes for the most consecutive successful title defenses of any of the current champions in the UFC.
Nunes, who holds gold in two weight classes, has fought five times since Shevchenko ascended to the empty throne atop the flyweight division in early December 2018, claiming the featherweight title three weeks later with a first-round knockout win over Cris Cyborg before defending each of her two belts twice. She successfully defeated Holly Holm and Germaine de Randamie in bantamweight title fights, and dispatched Felicia Spencer and Megan Anderson in featherweight championship bouts to run her overall winning streak to a dozen and give her a combined 9-0 record in UFC title fights.
The dominance Nunes has displayed is actually a tremendous reflection of how talented Shevchenko is inside the Octagon, as “The Lioness” remains the only fighter to get the better of the multi-lingual superstar from Kyrgyzstan, with Nunes started fast and holding on down the stretch to earn a unanimous decision win in their first encounter at UFC 196 before successfully defending her title by edging out Shevchenko on the cards in a widely debated split decision verdict at UFC 215 a little more than four years ago.
Both women have enjoyed uninterrupted success since that second encounter, and despite Nunes being up 2-0 in the series, a third fight between the two remains the most compelling option for each woman at this time, which only goes to further underscore how impressive Shevchenko has been throughout her UFC career and why the flyweight champion should be an even bigger star than she is.
Whenever you say something like that, folks within the MMA bubble instantly push back, pointing to her legions of fans within said bubble and the fact that she’s commanded prime real estate on multiple pay-per-view events over the course of her first 13 UFC appearances, including this weekend.
The counter to that, however, is that Shevchenko has headlined just four events, three of which were non-pay-per-view events (two during the FOX era, one on ESPN+) and her lone headlining turn on pay-per-view (UFC 215 opposite Nunes) only came when the flyweight title fight between champion Demetrious Johnson and challenger Ray Borg was scrapped late in fight week when the challenger was forced to withdraw from the contest.
More often than naught, Shevchenko has been a supporting figure, fighting in the co-main event or the first of three title fights as she did last time out at UFC 261, where she ran through Jessica Andrade with relative ease.
But a fighter of her caliber, with her success, and the multitudes that she contains merits a greater spotlight.
At the end of the first verse on “Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” Kanye West asks, “If you talkin’ bout classics, do my name get brought up?” and I have to feel that’s how Shevchenko feels at times, though I’m not sure whether she’s a Late Registration fan or not.
When we talk about the pantheon of all-time great talents on the female side of the sport, three names get brought up instantly and always — Nunes, Ronda Rousey, and Cris Cyborg — with Holly Holm and Miesha Tate feeling like the next two in line, largely due to their histories with Rousey, and former strawweight titleholder Joanna Jedrzejczyk and the current champion in the 115-pound weight class, Rose Namajunas, in the running as well.
Most would agree that Shevchenko belongs in that “next set,” but in terms of her results, a case could be made for “La Femme Valentina” meriting a place in the Top 3.
Now, there is no denying the larger impact Rousey had beyond the Octagon, as the woman who broke the gender barrier in the UFC and the biggest star in the sport during the height of her dominance (and a little after too), and Shevchenko cannot top her in terms of mainstream crossover and overall notoriety with the non-MMA audience, but resume-for-resume, it’s not hard to make a case that Shevchenko is the vastly superior fighter.
Rousey retired with a 12-2 record, earning a dozen consecutive stoppage victories before back-to-back knockout losses a year apart led to her departure from MMA and eventual transition into professional wrestling. She beat Tate twice, former Strikeforce champ Sarah Kaufman in her first ever title defense, and a collection of solid competitors after that before losing to Holm and then Nunes at UFC 193 and UFC 207 respectively.
Shevchenko is 21-3 overall, and 10-2 in the Octagon heading into her clash with Murphy this weekend. She beat Kaufman in her short-notice debut before losing to Nunes at UFC 196, then outworked Holm four months later before submitting Julianna Pena, who is set to challenge Nunes for the bantamweight title at UFC 269 in December, at the start of 2017.
That setup the championship bout opposite Nunes, which was delayed from the summer, and remains one of the most hotly debated decisions of the last five years, and since then, she’s been unstoppable, posting seven straight victories, including a decision win over Jedrzejczyk to claim the flyweight title and a second-round finish over another former strawweight titleholder, Andrade, last time out.
And from a skills standpoint, it’s not particularly close, as while Rousey was a dominant grappler, Shevchenko is one of the most complete fighters in the sport today.
Not one of the most complete female fighters on the roster — one of the most complete fighters period, and someone rightfully carrying that designation that can knock out a post-fight interview in three languages after doing her trademark victory dance, who has spent her life travelling around the world, training in different locations and stopping off at firing ranges along the way shouldn’t be less of a star than trash-talking competitors that have achieved a modicum of the success she’s amassed inside the Octagon.
Shevchenko is an undeniable talent with one of the most interesting stories and profiles in all of MMA — perhaps all of sport — and her dominance should be celebrated more and her star should shine even brighter than it currently does inside the MMA bubble and beyond.
