Jason Silva-USA TODAY Sports
Liz Carmouche talks about her UFC Uruguay title fight loss to Valentina Shevchenko.
Just two months after her sensational KO of Jessica Eye at UFC 238, UFC women’s flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko engaged in one of the worst title fights in recent memory, winning a shutout unanimous decision over Liz Carmouche in the UFC Uruguay main event. The two women combined for 60 landed significant strikes (42 from Shevchenko, 18 from Carmouche), with Carmouche throwing a preposterously low 76 over the span of 25 minutes.
Carmouche frequently opted to stay far on the outside against an elite counterstriker, and this led to prolonged spells of absolutely nothing of consequence occurring. From Liz’s standpoint, that wasn’t the performance she was expecting out of the champion.
“No, I absolutely anticipated that she would be a lot more aggressive and less hesitant,” Carmouche said at the evening’s post-fight press conference. (via MMA Fighting) “I think that because of the style that I was doing was throwing her off, but I thought that she’d be much more resilient in it and be more aggressive off of that instead of being more cautious and hesitant.”
“I think that we both had a game plan,” Carmouche continued. “I don’t think that there’s blame to be had. I think that I was throwing her off of her style, but I mean, to her I didn’t execute and get the win either. So I think it was both of our parts that negated our ability to do what either of us anticipated doing.”
Shevchenko is not really known for aggression unless her opponent is willing to lead the dance, so I have no idea what Carmouche or her team were expecting, and certainly not with ridiculous sequences such as this one.
Anyway, this series is knotted up at 1-1, so will we get that trilogy fight? Carmouche wants it, and believes she can adjust and find a way to unseat Shevchenko as champion.
“Absolutely, especially after this evening,” Carmouche said. “I think after the first fight there were so many things that when we first fought, I was still new to fighting, she had tons of experience. But after seeing her hesitance and her caution tonight and her not execute her usual game plan and not have that cutthroat killer instinct that everybody knows, but actually be hesitant?
“That’s not something we’ve seen her do before, so I’d absolutely do it again and do things differently and actually take that belt from her.”