Coach Conversation | UFC 306: Alexa Grasso vs Valentina Shevchenko 3

Kyte: What’s the best trait of Alexa Grasso and what’s the best trait of Valentina Shevchenko?

Chartier: I used to say with Valentina that it was that she’s so well-rounded, because she really is — she can strike with anyone, but she would go to the ground with grapplers and show she could beat you up there, too. She is such a well-rounded fighter and mentally strong, and her ability to make you fight her fight; everyone was doing that.

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But I would say her kickboxing is what she’s best known for — she’s done some great grappling in the UFC, but her kickboxing is what she’s known for most.

Grasso, she’s well-rounded, too, but she’s more of a grappler; that’s where she’s getting it done, especially against Shevchenko. That’s the only way she’s had success in these fights. It’s dirty when she has success on the feet, and she has to kind of make it dirty, but it’s successful.

I think it’s one of those classic matchups — striker versus grappler.

Kyte:  I think they’re both solid in the other realms — they can both excel there and probably beat a lot of people using their secondary weapon as their primary, but I agree that Grasso has to grimy it up. It can’t be a technical, in-the-pocket…

Chartier: Make it dirty, mix it up, keep her guessing, win the scrambles and get creative.

Kyte: Have you seen a decline from Shevchenko?

Chartier: That’s what I was just thinking about.

I had Shevchenko losing the Santos fight. It was very close and it’s almost like she got penalized for having too much back control, like ‘Oh, she didn’t punch her from the back, so she loses that round.’

I thought Santos won that fight, and if you look at it like that, she kind of lost the Santos fight, she was doing well in the first Grasso fight and then got caught, and then the last fight, was still a close fight; it wasn’t a typical Shevchenko performance.

So you wonder is there a decline? Is she going in the other direction? It looked like she was getting better and better and better, and then she wasn’t. So you wonder if this was the start of the decline where we’re gonna look back in a couple years and think, “That was a quick decline; that’s when it started.”

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I feel like she’s fighting great fighters — Grasso is good, Santos is good — and styles make fights, but I feel like if she loses this fight definitively, that’s what everyone will say: “She’s over the hill now, she’s on the decline; there’s a new queen of the division.”

Kyte: The thing that has been surprising to me with it is that in both of these fights, there have been bad mistakes — poor execution mistakes.

In the first fight, it’s the spinning back kick and Alexa pounces. It didn’t look as quick or as smooth as it normally does, Grasso read it, they had been preparing for it, and away we go. In the second fight, I thought she won the fight — the 10-8 in the fifth is crazy — but she still makes that mistake with 90 seconds left where she’s almost got a head-and-arm standing, and Grasso slips to her back and looks to finish her from there.

At the height of it, she wasn’t making those mistakes; it was just smash, smash, smash, smash, smash. So I wonder if the slippage is the tell that — I don’t think she’s washed by any stretch, but I think she’s coming back to the field a little bit, which is to be expected when you’re 36 and have close to 100 fights under your belt.

It just piles up.

Chartier: They have an interesting camp too where they just travel around and dip their toe in different gyms.

Kyte: Yeah, I don’t think you have to train with the absolute best to be the best, but I’d like you to be getting looks from people that are giving you the business in the gym. To just be bouncing around to different spots where you’re — I know there aren’t many bigger fish than her, but I wonder if she’d benefit from consistently working with some better people.

Path to Victory for Each Fighter

Kyte: That to me is the story of the second fight prior to the fifth round and the way things went there.

It felt like Grasso thought she could go shot-for-shot with her, thought she could win a kickboxing match against her, and went into the fifth round down 3-1. It was one of those standard things we talk about where you’re going in there, trying to go shot-for-shot on her terms, and she’s going to beat you, so then you’re down 2-0 or 3-0 or 3-1 and you need a finish.

If you’re in Grasso’s corner, do you get to her about “We’ve got to go early and be making this our fight from the jump; making this grimy, ugly, dirty and see if we can force some of those mistakes” rather than taking a wait-and-see approach?

Chartier: I think you’re playing with fire if you don’t force the issue, because if you’re standing at range with somebody like that, she can hurt you.

We said she has to make it boring and point-fight, but the reality is that she’s also throwing to hurt you, so you are playing with fire and you do have to press the issue a bit, create those moments rather than banking on them coming.

Because if they don’t come, then you’ve lost the first round, lost the second round, and you’re desperate. Against a counter-striker like Shevchenko that knows you’re desperate, that makes it easier for her.

So I think Grasso has to get on the gas early, make it dirty, and build confidence in herself, but also build doubt in Shevchenko. Win the mental battles, get the momentum early, and make her play catch-up.

Kyte: She’s had positive moments in both fights, so you know you can catch her, you know you can drop her, so push, push, push.

X Factor

Kyte: If there is a little something-something in this matchup that catches your eye, that piques your interest from a coaching standpoint, what is it?

Chartier: I think mine would have been what you said for your X factor — is Shevchenko slowing down? How does she look after the layoff? Does she look her age or did the time off help her?

I’m interested to see if this is that stamp on the end where now you’re a gatekeeper for the title. She could be at that point people thought Max (Holloway) was after he lost (to Alexander Volkanovski) the third time. You know she’s still one of the best in the world, but…

Kyte: For whatever reason, you just can’t beat that one person!

Chartier: Right! If she loses this fight, we almost need to see one more fight with someone new because it just might be a matchup thing like with Max and Volk.

So I’m really interested to see if she fights like a 36-year-old is expected to fight. That’s what I’m most curious about here.

Kyte: It’s funny because for me, it’s similar, but on the Grasso side, I want to know how she reckoned with that last fight and what it brings out of her in this one.

Because she probably shouldn’t be champion. You capitalized to full advantage the first time around and won that one clean; congratulations, all power to you. But you got away with one last time, so now there is a little — for me at least — “Are you the best or have you managed to sneak through here?”

Does that make you go out there and press? Does that make you go out there with a chip on your shoulder where you want to really prove you’re the best so that people don’t say, “It was kind of a fluke” because that’s where I feel we’re at right now.

I think it’s gonna be fun, though. I think it’s gonna be a very good fight.

Chartier: I’m just so interested to see how it plays out.