Valentina Shevchenko laughed off Wang Cong’s claim that she would also beat her in the octagon.
In October 2015, two months before making her UFC debut, Shevchenko (23-4-1 MMA, 13-2-1 UFC) lost her final kickboxing bout to Cong by unanimous decision in the Beijing-based Kunlun Fight promotion.
Cong (6-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) had just made her way to the UFC, scoring a 62-second one-punch knockout of Victoria Leonardo in her promotional debut at UFC on ESPN 62.
After her win, Cong claimed that she’d beat Shevchenko in a UFC fight.
“That was so funny,” Shevchenko told MMA Junkie on Cong. “The promotion that we fought (in), it was in China, and if you would’ve seen the judges back there in China, in that promotion, the judge of my second fight with Alexa would be an angel. To win in that promotion in China, you have to not only knock out your opponent, you have to make sure that she’ll lay down for 30 minutes.
“All muay Thai fighters who fought in China back then would say the same. Even after the fight, I posted a video of our fight on YouTube, and it was a crazy amount of comments saying, ‘What are the judges looking at? Are they there?’ But then the organization filed a claim against this video because of privacy.”
Shevchenko faces flyweight champion Alexa Grasso in a trilogy bout, which co-headlines UFC 306 Sept. 14 at Sphere in Las Vegas. She thinks it’s too early to praise Cong.
“Yeah, maybe she had a knockout, but it’s very hard to say when it’s your first fight against – I don’t know who was her opponent, I never heard of her,” Shevchenko said. “Let’s see (what) she’s going to claim and if she will have the same power against top 10 opponents. Let’s see it happening.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 306.
