Valentina Shevchenko continues to rack up wins as the UFC women’s flyweight champion, and her latest victory against Manon Fiorot may have set up a champion vs. champion superfight next.
Fiorot was a game challenger but just wasn’t slick enough to beat Shevchenko, who won their UFC 315 title fight 48-47 on all three judges’ scorecards. That marks “Bullet’s” 10th title win at 125 pounds and first defense in her second reign, which resumed after going 1-1-1 against Alexa Grasso in 2023 / 2024.
While there’s still interesting challenges for Shevchenko at women’s flyweight like Natalia Silva, it’s looking like women’s strawweight champion Zhang Weili wants to move up from 115 pounds to challenge for a second title next.
“Congratulations to the champion,” she wrote on Instagram following Shevchenko’s win in Montreal. “Everything has lined up perfectly, it‘s destiny.”
UFC CEO Dana White said he was willing to give the Chinese champ whatever she wanted after Zhang ran through Tatiana Suarez in February. Shevchenko sounded open to the fight but declared she’d let her OnlyFans members decide what was next.
“Everyone was saying before coming here, Weili or Natalia as another contender?” Shevchenko said at the UFC 315 post-fight press conference. “So yeah, I don’t know. I just want to maybe … fan can play some role in that and if they join my OnlyFans page and drop some messages, who they want to see me fight next. So I think it’s going to be … we will compare who’s next.”
Smart OnlyFans plug or missed opportunity to immediately hype up a champion vs. champion fight? It probably makes more financial sense for Shevchenko to push people to her membership portal and not immediately agree to the Zhang fight without first ensuring the UFC will pay her more for it.
But with so many fights taking so very long to come together this year, we do hope this obvious one gets booked easily and without too much delay.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
