Since winning the women's Flyweight UFC belt after the victory of Joanna Jedrzejczyk in December 2018, Valentina Shevchenko had seven consecutive defense of the belt. However, the frequency of Shevchenko's matches is increasingly prolonged. In 2022, she had only 1 match against Taila Santos in June.
Initially, UFC arranged for Shevchenko and Santos to play at the end of last year. However, Santos was then forced to withdraw from this schedule because she was hurting the eyeball area after the first match. That caused Shevchenko to reverse the belt protection schedule until February 2023, where she encountered Erin Blanchfield.
In the latest interview with UFC, Shevchenko showed dissatisfaction: “I want to fight in December but not. Anyway, we also need to sympathize with the organizers. I understand that UFC is hard to find a boxer to fight with me. What I can do is practice every day, waiting for a match.”
“If UFC came to call me and told me tomorrow, I was still ready to go to the radio. I want to fight regularly, but UFC doesn't guarantee that. Everyone wants to compete for the UFC championship, but why are the boxers in the same weight as I don't want to do it? I don't understand why they chose to be silent,” said Shevchenko.
As for Taila Santos, this boxer seemed to have chosen the option to avoid confrontation with Shevchenko again even when he completely recovered from injury. The remaining people who can fight Shevchenko are Alexa Grasso and Manon Fiorot. Another option that can help Shevchenko play more than squeeze Strawweight, or to Bantamweight.
However, the choice of changing weight seems not suitable for Shevchenko, who tried once and failed. In the last time Bantamweight's weight competition, she lost to Amanda Nunes, who was considered a female boxer “hundred years old” of UFC. Meanwhile, the strawweight weight class has many hard boxers taking turns.