5 reasons Valentina Shevchenko is better than Ronda Rousey was
Valentina Shevchenko is the dominant force in women's MMA. Ronda Rousey, by contrast, was. Now retired from mixed martial arts, Rousey is a pioneer of women's MMA and its first big crossover star.
Her inimitable in-cage performances and brash confidence earned her such a massive following that even UFC president Dana White, who once infamously claimed women would never fight in the UFC, was forced to eat his own words and build an entire division for Rousey after signing her.
While this led to a surging interest in women's MMA, Rousey was not without her shortcomings as both a competitor and representative of the sport. Valentina Shevchenko, on the other hand, is better for multiple reasons, which this list will now detail.
#5 Valentina Shevchenko is well-rounded
As a fighter, Rousey's goal was to close the distance and enter the clinch where she'd set up throws and trips to force the fight to the ground.
Any opponent swinging wildly at her in the hopes of deterring her from closing the distance only ever provided her with a stray arm to drag while they're off-balance. On the ground, she often hooked her arm over one of her opponent's, gifting her foe the underhook.
Not Peña, but @BulletValentina gets the first takedown of the match! #UFCDenver https://t.co/Rkisac8urS
Whenever her opponents eagerly sought to initiate scrambles using the underhook she gave them, Rousey immediately entangled their arm with her legs for an armbar setup.
This was facilitated by Rousey's Judo takedowns, which often landed her in side control, so she never needed to make as many transitions to be in position to attack her opponent's arm.
Unfortunately, while much of her game depended on her ability to enter the clinch, Rousey was poor at closing the distance. Her movement was completely linear as she would not step across her opponents to cut off their escape angles when they circled away.
Worse still, she followed her opponents without moving her head off the center-line when she threw punches, nor did she keep her chin tucked. This caused her to run into punches by the only two women she ever fought with good distance management: Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes.
Shevchenko, by contrast, has a more well-rounded skill-set as she is a technical counter-striker who stands just at the end of her opponent's kicking range, pulling her leg away whenever they try kicking it, making them miss. Once they're out of position, she punishes them with back kicks.
If they lunge in, she hops back to reestablish long range, leaning away to force her opponent into overextending before countering them with a check hook.
She is similarly comfortable grappling, often using her striking to establish a rhythm before ducking under her opponent's punches the next time they lunge forward, securing a bodylock and tripping them to the ground where she neutralizes her foes with her positional grappling. She is comfortable anywhere the fight goes while Ronda was not.