Ready for an MMA fact that ought to blow all of our minds? Like, every single time we hear it? Buckle in. Because it takes a second to get the full scope of the matter.
In 2003, Valentina Shevchenko officially made her professional debut as an MMA fighter. She also debuted as a pro kickboxer the same year. She had just turned 15. She then fought for 10 full years, which is an entire career for many fighters, in both MMA and kickboxing. Then the UFC finally opened its doors to women for the first time. Then Shevchenko had an entire other career as a UFC champ — the career we know her for now — on top of the one she’d already logged as an MMA and kickboxing wiz kid who was knocking out grown women as a teenager.
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To put that in perspective, Shevchenko started fighting as a professional seven years before Ronda Rousey had her first amateur bout. Shevchenko is not only still here but is still a UFC champion nine years after Rousey’s MMA career wrapped up.
Other fighters who started at around the same time Shevchenko did — people like Julie Kedzie, Roxanne Modafferi, Tara LaRosa, Shayna Baszler — are considered pioneers of women’s MMA. Which is this sport’s way of saying that they blazed the trail for others back before there was any money in it for them or even much mainstream respect. All of them are retired now. Because that’s life in combat sports. It’s a meat-grinder that your body and spirit can only endure for so long before one or both just give out. That’s how it is for everybody. Except for Shevchenko.
The sheer longevity would be impressive enough on its own. To start fighting professionally as a teenager — in two different combat sports — and still be here at the age of 37 is almost unheard of. To do all that and still be the most dominant champion that the women’s 125-pound division has ever known, by a wide margin, is frankly absurd.
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That brings us to Saturday’s co-main event bout from Madison Square Garden. In Zhang, Shevchenko faces an opponent who seems much fresher and closer to her prime, even though she’s somehow only one year younger. She’s also coming up from the 115-pound weight class, which she cleaned out so thoroughly over the past few years that there’s really nothing very interesting left for her to do there.
These kinds of fights always put a peculiar kind of pressure on the reigning champ in the higher division. There’s a feeling that she should win. She’s literally the bigger fighter. She’s protecting her own turf from the ambitious neighbor bent on violent expansion. To win is to uphold the basic order of things. To lose is a disaster.
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But Shevchenko’s situation seems different. She’s already one of the all-time greats, no matter what happens Saturday. She’s also looked in recent years like a champ who’s finally slowing down a little bit. It’s just that she was so far ahead of everyone else to begin with that even this has not allowed the rest of the division to catch all the way up to her.
She could lose and retire all in the same night and it would do nothing to diminish her legacy. There’s simply no one else out there who’s put in this kind of work, for this long, at this level.
Entire eras of the sport have come and gone during her time here. The UFC didn’t even have a TV deal when she started. Dana White and Joe Rogan both still had hair. The MMA world changed and then changed again and then changed some more. Still, Shevchenko has not only endured but dominated. What else can you really say about a career like that except … wow?!?
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But for some reason, Shevchenko still manages to fly a little bit under the radar these days. We don’t talk all that much about her until she shows up to defend her title. (This will be her 14th UFC title fight, by the way. She hasn’t fought a non-title bout since she initially dropped down to the newly established flyweight division in 2018.) She’s not controversial. She doesn’t demand or even seem to care about our attention. She just goes on being arguably the most consistently successful fighter in MMA history.
The thing about that kind of longevity is people get used to it. They kind of stop noticing it at a certain point. We take for granted that Shevchenko will show up, win, do her celebratory dance and then disappear. Until next time.
But eventually even this career has to wind down. Sooner or later, the day will come when this sport no longer has Valentina Shevchenko anywhere in it, and that’s a reality we haven’t known since George W. Bush was president and Tim Sylvia was UFC heavyweight champ.
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When that day finally comes, I suspect we’ll wish we had taken a moment here and there to appreciate Shevchenko’s unparalleled dominance in a sport that’s known for chewing people up and spitting them out. And when she’s finally done for good, there’s a very good chance that we’ll never see this kind of run, over this many years, ever again.