What happens after a champion has filled in all the ruby slots on their UFC championship belt? We may find out in another year or two given the wild run Valentina Shevchenko is on.<\/p>\n
Shevchenko filled out the first gold plate<\/a> on her belt with 8 gem slots (representing 8 title wins) in September 2024, and now has two more gems in the second plate \u2014 the latest from defending her strawweight title against former flyweight champion Zhang Weili at UFC 322. <\/a><\/p>\n Zhang was expected to be \u201cBullet\u2019s\u201d toughest opponent. Instead, Shevchenko handled her with ease<\/a> on the feet and completely dominated her against the cage and on the canvas. That leaves us wondering who she can face that might actually challenge her. And speaking at the UFC 322 post-fight press conference,<\/a> Valentina gave her thoughts on that.<\/p>\n \u201c[Bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison] is one of the possibilities, and I\u2019ll consider this,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel there are good challengers at flyweight, as well. Erin [Blanchfield], Natalia [Silva]. And at bantamweight now we have Amanda [Nunes] or Kayla [Harrison].\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think probably fans would like to see Amanda trilogy, because it\u2019s unfinished business. But at the same time, it\u2019s unclear: Is she returning, or not returning? Is she fighting or not fighting? It\u2019s unknown in what shape she\u2019s going to return. Half Amanda? Maybe full Amanda? Who knows. But Kayla is another possibility, and it\u2019s going to be a super challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever the case, the 37-year-old Shevchenko plans to stick around as long as possible. Speaking to UFC\u2019s About Last Fight show following her Madison Square Garden win, \u201cBullet\u201d explained her mentality and why she has no plan to quit.<\/p>\n \u201cI just want to be here because martial arts, for me, is my lifestyle. It\u2019s my philosophy, it\u2019s everything for me. I see the world through the prism of martial arts \u2026 I wanna break all limits, what fighters and people have in their head. They say, \u2018Okay, after a certain age, you are old. You cannot fight anymore.\u2019 So I wanna break all these things and say that there is no limits.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t set limits in your head, there is no limit,\u201d she concluded. \u201cJust keep doing what you love to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What happens after a champion has filled in all the ruby slots on their UFC championship belt? We…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,162126,785,139415,85,162125,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-289009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-jack-della-vs-islam-start-time","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-preview-and-live-results","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ufc-322-fight-card","16":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}