Alright guys, if you’ve been reading all week, you know I’m on vacation starting today, so, keep that in mind. I’m writing this on my phone so I’m sure autocorrect will get me a few times at some point. This may be a bit shorter than usual, but I said these previews would come out, so I didn’t want to shortchange everyone. However, they may be a bit shorter than what a preview may typically look like. Anyways, the co-main event of UFC 275 will see Valentina Shevchenko defending her women’s flyweight title against new challenger Taila Santos. Valentina is probably the closest thing we have to that “invincible champion” these days and that has a lot of people dismissing this fight. While I definitely think Taila Santos would’ve benefited from having additional high level fights before getting this title shot, I think she is certainly live here and might be the most interesting opponent that Valentina has had in a few fights now. That isn’t to say that I’m picking Santos to win, but she presents a level of explosiveness that we haven’t seen in Shevchenko’s opponent in a few contests now. I won’t get into the whole thing her in the intro, so let’s just get into this.
Taila Santos gets this fight because she is the fighter with the best win streak that is highest in the rankings that provides a fresh face for Valentina. Maybe some will read that as a dig at Santos, but it isn’t necessarily meant that way, it’s just sort of the reality of the situation. Under normal circumstances, I don’t think Santos would have gotten this fight, but I don’t think that means she’s unworthy either. In my opinion, she could have used more high level experience, but that isn’t a luxury that she was afforded given how the UFC is searching for fresh faces for Shevchenko title defenses. Santos comes into this fight with an overall record of 19-1 with a 4-1 record in the UFC, 5-1 if you count her fight on Contender Series. She lost her promotional debut against Mara Romero Borella via split decision and has won her last 4 in a row to propel herself into this spot. Those wins have come against Molly McCann, Gillian Robertson, Roxanne Modafferi, and Joanne Wood. Only her win over Wood came via finish, in the form of a rear naked choke submission late in the first round. While it hasn’t always translated to finishes, Santos’ biggest stylistic advantage is her physicality. She is a big and strong athlete for women’s flyweight and she uses that to her advantage both in the striking and grappling. On the feet, Santos uses an excellent combination of speed and power to damage her opponents, mostly through her boxing. She isn’t especially technical, but her power for the division stands out. She isn’t necessarily the typical power striker either I’m that she is able to throw at a pretty decent level of output as well. She definitely isn’t a volume striker, but she isn’t just standing and waiting for one big punch either. Statistically, she is a more active striker than Valentina, but I have my suspicions that we’ll see the numbers be pretty close on that end. Santos combines her power based striking game with a solid grappling attack as well. All things considered, I think her grappling may be the more reliable part of her game. She has found a nice balance of position based wrestling and submission attempts that fits her well. With her usual size advantage, she shouldn’t have much an issue controlling most women in the division from top position. She gets her takedowns at a very high rate, over 80%, and also defends takedowns at over an 80% rate. Speaking of defense, Santos also does a great job of limiting damage on the feet. She uses her length and reach to avoid a lot of strikes and then slide just into range to land her own. While Santos has a lot of physical advantages over most women in the division, her biggest weakness is the finer details of her game. She has all of the talent and natural gifts, but a lot of the high level details that are required at the championship caliber of fighting could use some improvement. Unfortunately, I think a lot of that comes with experience which Santos just doesn’t really have. There are technical advancements that could be made as well. She was never going to be able to catch up to Shevchenko in that regard, but she probably needed to narrow that gap at least a little bit. The biggest concern in this fight for Santos will be her cardio. She goes to a lot of decisions, but she ends up fading and losing a lot of steam as the fights progress. She relies more on natural strength, power, and explosiveness and that contributes to her gassing out. If she were able to improve her technique, she could rely more on the technicalities to do the work instead of having to brute force things so often. Shevchenko won’t get tired and does a great job at keeping the fight at her pace, so even if Santos has early success, Shevchenko will be able to maintain her pace way deeper into the fight.
Valentina Shevchenko comes into this fight looking for yet another dominant title defense to add to the list. In my mind, she’s probably the most dominant champion in the UFC and in recent performances it seems like that gap is only getting wider. She will enter the cage with only 3 career losses, all of which came at bantamweight and 2 of those are to the current women’s MMA GOAT Amanda Nunes. Since making the full time transition to flyweight, Shevchenko has looked nothing short of unstoppable. She won the vacant title over Joanna Jedrzejczyk in 2018 and hasn’t looked back since. She head kick knocked out Jessica Eye in her first defense in devastating fashion, then won a decision over Liz Carmouche. She would TKO Katlyn Chookagian and pick up a decision win over Jennifer Maia. Her last two wins have both been TKO victories over Jessica Andrade and Lauren Murphy. In all of those fights, Jennifer Maia is the only one to even win a round and that came via top control. Stylistically, Shevchenko has virtually no weakness. Her combinations are extremely technical and fast. Her wrestling is both technical and powerful. If there’s any area of her game that does have something “negative” to say, it’s that the power in her strikes is closer to average, but even that is kind of a stretch and knit picking. She’s finished tough fighters on the feet, she’s finished tough fighters on the ground. She’s beaten longer fighters, stronger fighters, more powerful strikers, wrestlers, kick boxers, and everything in between. Unlike Amanda Nunes, there really isn’t a clear path to beating her. Amanda has had a history of gas tank problems, but I think a lot of them were ignored because it had been so long since any of them manifested in a meaningful way. Obviously, any fighter can be caught with a power punch right on the chin and go out, but beyond that, there really isn’t a clear path to beating Shevchenko in my eyes. I think a really tough grappler with an elite level top game may be able to control her or maybe an elite level BJJ fighter could catch her in a submission, but that’s about it. I don’t think someone is going to win a technical striking battle against her any time soon. She is as well rounded of a fighter as the UFC has on their roster right now and it is going to take a performance for the ages to dethrone her in my opinion.
As for the keys to the fight, I want to take a moment to emphasize that I think Santos is the most dangerous opponent we’ve seen Valentina fight in a long time. I don’t see anyone having the combination of strength, technique, and cardio it would take to grind out a decision win over 5 rounds against Valentina. I just think she’s too good of an athlete and too technically sound to have that happen to her, at least in the immediate future. I think the only way she loses in the next couple of years is if someone who is an explosive athlete can catch her in a bad position, be that in the striking or grappling, and finding a finish. I think Santos has the requisite level of athleticism and power to do that. The danger factor with Santos is significantly higher than the blood and guts type fighter that Lauren Murphy is and the low impact volume strikers like Maia and Chookagian. I think that is why I’m moderately more interested in this fight than the past few. I don’t know that Santos has a great chance to win, but her chance at least exists. I think a similar approach to what Julianna Peña did to Amanda Nunes would be the best thing for Santos here. Try to turn it into a fire fight and trust that her power would come out on top. Maybe she can drop Valentina and then try to find a submission. That would seriously deplete her gas tank, but she doesn’t have the ability to go 5 rounds with Valentina competitively even if the fight was slow paced. I think going all out to get a finish in the first 7-8 minutes is the best way to go for Santos because her odds of winning beyond that point are diminished regardless. As for Valentina, I think she just has to do what she does. There’s no need to take unnecessary risks in this fight because Santos does have the ability to find the finish if she gets the opening. She needs to keep her combinations tight and chip away in the early going and work on Santos’ gas tank. As the fight progresses and Santos begins to tire, Valentina can start to sit down on her shots more and look for the finish as we get through rounds 3, 4, and 5.
What do you guys think? What are your predictions? Are you excited for the fight? Leave your thoughts and comments below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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