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After more than a year on the shelf thanks to a serious neck injury, undefeated UFC prospect Tatiana Suarez has announced she’s ready to return. Suarez also declared that she is moving to the flyweight division.
Following her move into the flyweight division, could Tatiana Suarez be the fighter with the best chance of dethroning dominant UFC flyweight champion, Valentina Shevchenko?
The answer is almost certainly yes. Here are three reasons why Tatiana Suarez is the fighter to dethrone UFC flyweight champion, Valentina Shevchenko.
#1 Tatiana Suarez is the best female wrestler in the UFC
Tatiana Suarez is not only unbeaten in MMA and in the UFC, but she’s also probably the best female wrestler in the UFC right now too.
In 2011, Suarez was considered the number one ranked freestyle wrestler in the US. Only a neck injury prevented her from competing in the 2012 Olympics.
And while Sara McMann is more credentialed than the TUF winner, having won an Olympic silver medal in 2004, it’s hard to dispute the idea that Suarez is the best wrestler in MMA.
Thus far into her UFC career, none of her opponents have been able to prevent her from taking them down. This includes Carla Esparza, who is a highly rated wrestler in her own right.
And when Suarez gets an opponent to the ground, it’s very hard for them to escape from underneath her top control.
That’s partly because to go along with her wrestling. Suarez is a high-level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, winning gold medals in the 2013 and 2015 World Jiu-Jitsu Championship in the brown belt division.
So could Suarez take Valentina Shevchenko down if they were to fight? Despite the Bullet’s strong takedown defense and grappling, the likelihood is that even she’d find herself planted on her back. This would allow Suarez to win.
#2 The lack of weight cutting should make Tatiana Suarez even stronger
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Tatiana Suarez’s UFC career thus far is that despite her running through her opponents, she’s actually claimed that she felt “off” during those fights.
Suarez has put this down to the drastic weight cut she was making to reach the 115lbs strawweight limit. The 30-year-old stated that while she never had an issue making weight, it was definitely draining.
And when you consider that she fought at 125lbs for the first three fights of her career prior to joining the UFC, things start to make more sense.
In 2016, when Suarez first entered the octagon, the UFC women’s flyweight division didn’t actually exist. This essentially forced Suarez to cut that extra 10lbs to make it into the promotion.
Now, though, the flyweight division is well-established in the UFC, meaning Suarez can move back to her natural weight.
And theoretically, at least, that should mean that we see a better version of a fighter who’s already looked tremendous.
Suarez herself has already claimed that she always felt far stronger and more explosive prior to making her weight cut. This means that she could well be a very dangerous fighter indeed at 125lbs.
And given her success at 115lbs, a more explosive and stronger Tatiana Suarez could definitely prove to be the kryptonite for Valentina Shevchenko.
#3 Valentina Shevchenko has been beaten by takedowns before
While it’s fair to say that she competes in one of the UFC’s thinnest divisions, few people would argue with the idea that Valentina Shevchenko is one of the UFC’s most dominant champions.
The Bullet saw plenty of success at 135lbs before moving to flyweight in 2018. Since then, she’s only impressed further, running through opponents like Jessica Andrade and Katlyn Chookagian.
In fact, Shevchenko has been so dominant that she’s made solid UFC fighters look like they don’t belong in the octagon at all.
But if the Bullet has one weakness, it might be on the ground.
Sure, Shevchenko has finished opponents on the mat in the UFC at times, usually from top position. But is she as dangerous from her back?
She did submit Julianna Pena with an armbar from underneath in 2017. But her loss to Amanda Nunes at UFC 196 suggests that a strong wrestler could be her Achilles heel.
In that fight, Nunes grounded Shevchenko in both the first and second rounds, beating her down in the second in particular.
And while Nunes is a genuinely great fighter, she isn’t the wrestler that Tatiana Suarez is.
The same can be said about basically every fighter that Shevchenko has faced in her dominant run as UFC flyweight champion - from Jennifer Maia and Katlyn Chookagian to Jessica Andrade and Jessica Eye.
If Suarez were to fight Shevchenko and secure a takedown - or more than one takedown in a longer fight - then there’s every chance that she could do enough to defeat one of the UFC’s most dominant fighters.
