The best and worst from UFC 231: Holloway vs. Ortega

#1 Worst: Is Shevchenko the new Mighty Mouse?

Valentina Shevchenko outpointed Joanna Jedrzejczyk to capture the Flyweight title

In Saturday’s co-main event, Valentina Shevchenko defeated Joanna Jedrzejczyk to finally win the Women’s Flyweight title after seeing her previous attempt to do so canceled through no fault of her own. It was nice to see ‘Bullet’ finally holding UFC gold, but to be really frank, the fight wasn’t all that inspiring.

I’m not attempting to take anything away from Shevchenko as she did an excellent job to outpoint the dangerous Jedrzejczyk – to the point where the former Strawweight champ simply couldn’t uncork the kind of combinations she used to destroy fighters like Claudia Gadelha and Carla Esparza at 115lbs – but it’s hard to deny that ‘Bullet’ didn’t come close to hurting the challenger as much as Rose Namajunas did in her two Strawweight title fights against the Pole.

The worrying thing is – squash of the overmatched Priscila Cachoeira aside – Shevchenko’s UFC career has been full of largely forgettable point-fighting exhibitions like this. It’s not that she isn’t a great fighter – I don’t think anyone beats her at Flyweight right now – but she simply isn’t the most exciting to watch, not compared to other top female fighters like Namajunas, Jessica Andrade or Cris Cyborg.

When you add in the fact that Shevchenko isn’t the loudest personality and likely won’t talk much trash, and the UFC has hardly showcased much of the division yet, it’s a situation worryingly reminiscent of the men’s Flyweight division when Demetrious Johnson was on top. I could be way off with this, but it’s something to keep an eye on going forward.