Shevchenko routs Carmouche to retain UFC title – ESPN

“The Bullet” is No. 1. And no-one looks shut to catching up anytime quickly.

Valentina Shevchenko retained her UFC females’s flyweight title by task of unanimous resolution (50-45, 50-45, 50-45) over Liz Carmouche within the foremost tournament of UFC Montevideo on Saturday in Uruguay. The waste end result was never uncertain. Shevchenko dominated from beginning to total, and Carmouche never mounted any roughly important offense. Shevchenko outstruck Carmouche 42-18 in important strikes.

Shevchenko, tied for 2d with Cris Cyborg on ESPN’s pound-for-pound females’s MMA list, said afterward that Carmouche has an unorthodox fashion, and her sport notion was to defend in opposition to some of these assaults. Possibly that is why the 5-round fight was uneventful at events. The team grew impatient all the blueprint by some stretches of inaction.

“I did all the pieces to make sure my victory correct by the cage,” Shevchenko said.

Shevchenko’s 42 important strikes were the fewest landed in a 5-round title fight since Miesha Tate landed 40 in opposition to Holly Holm at UFC 196 in 2016.

This was the 2d fight between Shevchenko and Carmouche. In 2010, Carmouche beat Shevchenko by task of doctor’s stoppage (decrease) on a regional characterize on an Oklahoma Native American reservation.

Shevchenko said she’d love a Third fight with UFC females’s featherweight and bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes — or “whoever else” the UFC needs her to face. Nunes has overwhelmed Shevchenko twice, but each and each fights were shut, and the 2d fight, in 2017, ended in a disputed resolution.

“I want all people here correct by the Octagon,” Shevchenko said.

Shevchenko did not basically near shut to finishing. She dropped Carmouche with a aggregate within the third and with a spinning back fist within the fourth. Over the ultimate three rounds, Shevchenko, known for her striking skill as a extra than one-time world Muay Thai champion, was ready to grind out Carmouche on the ground for stretches.

Shevchenko (17-3), a native of Kyrgyzstan who has lived for years in Peru, has gained four straight since that loss to Nunes. She has two straight a success title defenses. Shevchenko, 31, has misplaced only to Nunes and Carmouche in her MMA occupation. She has seven occupation UFC wins, tied for fourth amongst females in UFC ancient past with Raquel Pennington.

Carmouche (13-7) got here in on a two-fight winning plod. The San Diego resident and broken-down U.S. Marine took fragment within the first UFC females’s fight in 2013, a bantamweight title loss to Ronda Rousey. Carmouche, 35, was ranked No. 4 in ESPN’s females’s flyweight MMA rankings coming in.