Liz Carmouche Doesn’t View Valentina Shevchenko As ‘Unstoppable’
Liz Carmouche doesn’t view flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko as an unstoppable machine ahead of UFC Uruguay on Saturday.
Shevchenko has dominated the opposition since moving to her natural weight class at 125 pounds. She comfortably defeated Joanna Jedrzejczyk via unanimous decision to win the vacant title. “Bullet” then defended the belt for the first time with a vicious head kick knockout of Jessica Eye.
But for former bantamweight title challenger Carmouche, some perspective is required:
“I think you have to really take things into perspective,” Carmouche told MMA Fighting. “If you look at Joanna, she moved up simply for this fight and then went right back down to her weight class. So she was mismatched because she was in the wrong weight class, didn’t even have to worry about cutting weight so already there’s going to be a strength advantage. Add to that, they’d already faced each other three or four times in Muay Thai and [Joanna] had been defeated. In my eyes, she stood no chance so really just scrap that fight and look at the Jessica Eye fight.
“Unfortunately [the fight with Eye] went exactly how I expected. Actually I thought it would happen in the first round instead of the second. So you can really go off of one fight and to me that doesn’t really show someone that’s unstoppable or has this mystique around them that they should be someone to be feared.”
Carmouche actually holds a win over Shevchenko. However, that was nine years ago and only because of a doctor stoppage. And while she’s a big betting underdog, Carmouche hopes Shevchenko realizes it won’t be an easy day at the office:
“I’ve been having like one fight a year because I tell them I want to fight more and people say ‘we don’t really want to fight Liz because even if we win, we’re going to pay for it, we’re going to have to take six months to recover’,” Carmouche added. “As much as it might be a win on your record, it’s not a win.
“So I’m hoping that she has that same thought in her mind. It isn’t going to be an easy fight and I hope she has it in her mind as such.”
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