The centerpiece of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s International Fight Week is anchored by a rematch between two of the best women’s bantamweights on the planet.
On the other side of the cage will be Shevchenko. The former muay Thai champion has continued to get more comfortable in the Octagon throughout her four fights in the UFC. “Bullet” debuted in the promotion in 2015 with a short-notice split decision win against Sarah Kaufman and then proceeded to lose a unanimous decision to Nunes. Since then, Shevchenko took a commanding decision victory against former champion Holly Holm and followed it up with a second-round submission against streaking contender Julianna Pena at UFC on Fox 23 in January.
This is a solid rematch between two women who have continued to improve in the 16 months since their initial meeting. Here is how the Tale of the Tape looks for the UFC 213 main event on Saturday in Las Vegas:
Nunes holds an anthropometric edge. Being three inches taller with two inches of additional reach may not seem like much, but they pair well with her physical and technical strengths. Do not read too much into those, though: Holm and Pena had similar height and reach advantages over Shevchenko, and it did not amount to much for either of them.
Although Nunes started her professional career five years after Shevchenko, she has more total fights. Most notably, Nunes has eight additional fights in the big leagues when her two Invicta Fighting Championships bouts are included. This is because Nunes debuted in Strikeforce in 2011, whereas Shevchenko first fought in the UFC in 2015; and “Bullet” took four years off from MMA between 2006 and 2010 while competing in muay Thai tournaments. Still, the challenger has amassed more high-level minutes despite having less than half as many fights, mostly because Nunes tends to finish opponents quickly.
The final piece to make note of is the training difference. Nunes fights out of one of the premier camps in the world, whereas Shevchenko has not had a single home base in her UFC career thus far. One of the most common denominators among champions is training with elite fight teams, and while it is not a prerequisite to do so, it certainly helps.
Both women are primarily strikers, so let us get into the standup numbers:
The striking matchup should be an interesting style clash.
Shevchenko is much more accomplished in pure striking, with numerous muay Thai championships to prove it. She is a slick counterpuncher who prefers to slow down the pace of a fight and keep distance. She uses a diverse arsenal of kicks and can throw devastating punch-kick combinations. She balances her targets more than most, aiming a nice 69 percent of her shots at opponents’ heads, with the remaining 12 percent and 19 percent of her shots going to the body and legs. Her range is less balanced: 82 percent of her strikes come from distance, while 11 percent are in the clinch and seven percent are to grounded opponents.
Nunes, on the other hand, is an aggressive pressure fighter. Her size, strength and ferocity make her a fearsome striker in any phase of the fight. She works at a high pace and is much more willing to eat shots in order to shepherd her opponent against the fence. She tends to headhunt, with 82 percent of her strikes going upstairs and only eight percent to the body and 10 percent to the legs. Her range, however, is much more closely distributed: 53 percent of her strikes come from distance, with 10 percent in the clinch and 37 percent to opponents on the ground.
The pressure fighter-counterpuncher is the general dynamic, but there are more nuances to that. For instance, Shevchenko is a process-oriented fighter who needs to fight at a certain pace in order to collect rounds. Nunes, however, can afford to drop rounds because of one-punch power that can end the fight at any given moment. Nunes’ power also allows her to get hit more and still win rounds, a luxury that Shevchenko has not proven to possess. Beyond that, Shevchenko has been able to deal with pressure in the past by clinching up, but against a more physically imposing opponent in Nunes -- and one with a superior grappling pedigree -- that could end up being unwise. Ultimately, Shevchenko is the more technical overall striker, but she needs Nunes to adapt to her in specific ways in order for her to win enough exchanges across five rounds.
Should the fight hit the mat with both women in full consciousness, here is how the grappling matchup will break down:
Nunes is a significantly more accomplished grappler. “Lioness” is a jiu-jitsu black belt and a judo brown belt with gi and no-gi grappling championships to back it up. However, in MMA, she does not often put her submission skills on display, though her rear-naked choke wins against Sara McMann and Miesha Tate are both impressive. Despite her submission talents, she is much better at finishing fights with strikes from dominant positions. She is difficult to take down and good at scrambling, as well, which allows her to keep the fight on the feet and go back to her wheelhouse of throwing vicious strikes.
Shevchenko is not just a brilliant striker, though. She has a number of slick takedowns, including trips and throws, and her armbar from guard against Pena was as smooth as it gets. Earlier in her career, Shevchenko racked up five submission wins, too. These are impressive, if not necessary improvements to make, especially since her striking is the core of her game. No one, including Nunes, has been able to submit her.
Even though both women prefer striking, grappling will likely play an important role in the outcome of the fight. In the first bout, Nunes’ strongest round was when she took down Shevchenko and rained heavy ground-and-pound. Nunes dominated on the mat, and she will likely try to take down “Bullet” again in the rematch. If Shevchenko can do more than just survive on the mat, she can potentially wear down Nunes’ notoriously suspect cardio and start to impose her game on the feet. That is a big “if,” but her performance against Pena was a big step in the right direction.
Final Word
This is a great fight. Sure, Nunes already handed Shevchenko a loss, but there was a big momentum shift in the third round and now we get to see how that might have played out in championship rounds -- should the fight make it that far. It is a close fight, and the oddsmakers are torn: Depending where you look, Nunes could be the slight favorite, Shevchenko could be the slight favorite or it could be dead even. For the most part, the challenger is the favorite anywhere between -105 and -120, with the incumbent champion in the +101 to -115 range. The fight has a lot of wrinkles that could potentially manifest differently. Watching those wrinkles unfold is itself worth the price of attention.
Data for the analysis was provided by FightMetric. Eric Stinton performed all analysis. Stinton and Sherdog.com assume no responsibility for bets placed on fights, financial or otherwise.