Carmouche Hoping For Shevchenko Trilogy Bout

Fighting for the second time in ten years, Valentina Shevchenko and Liz Carmouche are now tied 1-1. Carmouche won the first bout in a competitive bout that was stopped via TKO. Last night at UFC Uruguay, Valentina won a one-sided affair that evened the score.

Successfully defending her Flyweight Title, Shevchenko (18-3) is looking to move on to bigger things. She is hoping to face Amanda Nunes for the third time. Carmouche (13-7) has a different plan.

Although Carmouche did not land any significant strikes in the third round, she did see some faults from Shevchenko. It appears the crowd saw faults from both fighters, as they booed the bout at various points. Carmouche didn’t think the crowd was a distraction for the champion, but thought she worked well enough to throw her off her game.

“No, I absolutely anticipated that she would be a lot more aggressive and less hesitant,” Carmouche stated at the 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.”

Carmouche is now 2-2 in her last four fights. This was also her third unsuccessful attempt at a title. Back in 2011 she lost to Marloes Coenen for the Strikeforce Women’s Bantamweight Champion. She was featured in the first official women’s bout of the UFC when she lost to Ronda Rousey for the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship in 2013.

While the UFC may have other plans for Valentina, Carmouche believes there is just cause for one last shot at Valentina.

“Absolutely, especially after this evening,” Carmouche went on to say. “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?”