Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko: words before the fight

Valentina Shevchenko:

“I can’t say that this defeat taught me anything. Alexa says she was good in the first fight, but I say not good enough to win. I was winning the whole fight from the first round right up until the last moment in the fourth round, but now I don’t think about what happened. I know what I have to do this Saturday and I’m not looking back. In this position I don’t have time for sentimentality, I don’t have time for that. I only have to go forward, not a step backwards.”

Alexa Grasso:

“It’s strange for me to hear that because she’s a person with a lot of experience, performing at the highest level, and we all know that there are no accidents. I was preparing that moment. You can watch the training video where I’m practicing the same position. I trained that to win the fight. As for the score, the first round was on me. In the second round, and I thought that she, as a Muay Thai champion, would want to fight me in the stand-up, but she decided to go to the parterre. In the fourth round I made adjustments and I think the score became 2-2. For me, the round-by-round score was 2-2.”

“I made a lot of changes in preparation for the second fight. We’ve already spent 20 minutes in the octagon, and this time I’m going to do everything I can to make it a stand-up fight. I performed well in the first round and it was amazing – this Saturday I promise to give you all an equally amazing fight”

In March of this year, 30-year-old Alexa Grasso pulled off one of the most high-profile upsets in mixed martial arts history, finishing 35-year-old Valentina Shevchenko by rear-naked choke in the fourth round to become the new UFC flyweight champion. In doing so, “Bullet” entered the fourth round leading the fight 29-28 on all judges’ scorecards.

Before losing to the Mexican, Shevchenko made seven successful title defenses, which she won against Joanna Jedrzejczyk in December 2018.