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UFC Women’s Flyweight Championship

#2 P4P | Valentina Shevchenko (20-3) vs. #5 P4P | Jessica Andrade (21-8)

ODDS: Shevchenko (-390), Andrade (+320)

All things considered, Shevchenko’s reign as flyweight champion has gone about as well as possible. Shevchenko’s five-fight run in the UFC’s bantamweight division left a bit of an odd legacy. By the end of it, Shevchenko was clearly the second-best woman at 135 pounds behind Amanda Nunes, but there was always some frustration that she could not be even better. A lot of Shevchenko’s approach centers around control and precision, almost to a fault. While her striking is obviously well-practiced after a decorated Muay Thai career, she will almost never press the issue, instead just taking advantage of what her opponents present to her. That is also meant that a surprising amount of Shevchenko’s success has come via her clinch game and wrestling, the latter of which has been somewhat of her secret weapon until her last few bouts. As an undersized bantamweight, that whole package led to some tediously slow-paced fights—including the two against Nunes—but since she cut to flyweight, it has become a whole other deal. Shevchenko’s 125-pound debut was one of the biggest mismatches in UFC history, as “Bullet” basically had no option but to maul a completely overmatched Priscila Cachoeira in a bout that saw the Brazilian suffer multiple major injuries. After overpowering Joanna Jedrzejczyk to earn the vacant flyweight belt, Shevchenko has been a dominant champion and provided some surprising entertainment in the process. Ignoring her title defense against Liz Carmouche—a fight bad enough that Carmouche was subsequently cut from the UFC—Shevchenko almost cannot help adding to her highlight reel against the likes of Jessica Eye and Katlyn Chookagian, each of whom quickly ran out of options and ate quick and one-sided defeats. However, Jennifer Maia did add some actual intrigue to their affair. The Brazilian enjoyed a surprising amount of success matching Shevchenko in the clinch early and even took a round from the champion, even if Shevchenko managed to take over and impose her will for another one-sided decision by the time everything was said and done. As always, the question revolves around who can test the flyweight queen over the course of five rounds, and if nothing else, Maia’s moments of success provide some hope that Andrade could be the one to exploit those issues.

Conventional wisdom was that despite being a former strawweight champion, Andrade should have been in the flyweight division all along, and early returns have thus far proven that true. “Bate Estaca” came into the UFC as a bantamweight, and even then, she was an absolute tank of a fighter. Just 5-foot-1, Andrade was still able to overpower most of her opponents. However, her rawness and lack of size led to some diminishing returns, and without a 125-pound division at the time, Andrade announced that she would cut all the way to strawweight. It seemed like a risky proposition, if only because there did not seem to be much mass that Andrade could lose from her well-built frame, but it worked out better than anyone could have expected. With her additional power relative to her opposition, Andrade rode her straight-ahead game all the way to the strawweight title, taking home gold in appropriate fashion by dropping Rose Namajunas directly on her head for a slam knockout. However, Andrade found herself outside of the title picture just a year later. She lost the title to Weili Zhang in less than a minute, dropped a rematch to Namajunas and found herself without an immediate path back to contention at 115 pounds. By then, the flyweight division was established and wide open, and so, with just one win—a body shot knockout of Chookagian in October—Andrade is suddenly back in the mix as Shevchenko’s top contender and possibly her most interesting challenge yet at 125 pounds.

Maia’s early success against Shevchenko really does add a lot of intrigue to this fight. It shows Shevchenko can be overpowered, and that is the entire basis of Andrade’s approach. However, Andrade is still at a size and perhaps a little bit of a strength disadvantage, so it is hard to see her sustaining any success over five rounds if this fight takes place purely in the clinch and on the mat. That is where Andrade is probably going to need to take this, since a striking match does not figure to go particularly well for the challenger. The good news? Andrade is the rare fighter who has the aggression and recklessness to force Shevchenko into a higher-paced approach. Still, Andrade’s defensively open approach means that the end result of that will probably just be her charging into Shevchenko’s powerful strikes ad nauseum. There are a lot of things that could cause Shevchenko some issues in moments, like Andrade’s strength and her newfound investment in strikes to the body, but the Brazilian’s dependence on turning her big moments of violence into a finish does not seem like it will serve her well. Remember, Shevchenko has looked close to indestructible over the course of her reign. This still figures to be the most dramatic fight of Shevchenko’s career, given that Andrade should get off to a hot start, but the champion’s striking technique and her much deeper clinch and wrestling games should eventually allow her to right the ship and coast to a victory. A finish in the later rounds would not be a shock, but the pick is Shevchenko via decision.

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