Chael Sonnen urges Valentina Shevchenko to take on the villain role.
Pretty much since the creation of the UFC female flyweight division, Valentina Shevchenko has been queen. He won the title back in 2018 and defended it seven times in a row. She recently lost the belt at UFC 285 to the new champ, Alexa Grasso. Immediately following the loss, Shevchenko began to express her frustration with the way parts of the fight played out.
Shevchenko was upset with the referee of her fight, Jason Herzog for standing the fighters back up in the middle of a round. Shevchenko hinted that she felt that action affected her performance and the outcome of the fight. Now Chael Sonnen is taking a look at this “excuse” by Shevchenko as an opportunity for her to embrace the villain role.
Chael Sonnen thinks Valentina Shevchenko has always been the bad guy and now is the time to embrace it
Shevchenko was the topic of Sonnen’s most recent YouTube rant. He found it strange that she was a very dominant champion and yet, in his opinion, nobody cared about the fight with Grasso. Sonnen has been critical of Shevchenko’s marketability for some time now. He thinks this is her chance to turn heel.
“The “Bullet” goes on Ariel’s show and she started making excuses,” he said. “This even tied into the referee Jason Herzog who had brought them up, there was a position earlier in the fight where he brought them back up to their feet for inactivity. She thought in that situation she was doing enough to stay there, have an opportunity to settle in, or even advance. I don’t disagree with her that’s a referee’s decision what I’m sharing for you is this, an excuse and you’re blaming somebody else. That’s life and we all do it but when we do that in the world of sport we are now a bad guy.”
Sonnen called her one of the most dominant champions of all time and spoke about how she should deserve a rematch but perhaps no fans want to see it. He thinks being the “bad guy” will bring fans on board with this fight. He does not think this is too much of a stretch either.
“I believe at her core you have a bad girl here, I think it just needs to be embraced,” he said. “I’m not putting her down when I say that by the way, I think from an entertainment aspect it would be wildly helpful. I just don’t know that it’s a stretch or that it would be a performance. I feel as though it’s right here in front of us. I mean I can go one interview to the next, to the next and then I could just keep going down them and I’m standing back and I’m looking and going that’s not what the good person says that’s what the villain says. That’s not what the good guy does, that’s what the villain does.”
There has already been a discussion of an immediate rematch. It seems that both fighters want it. Grasso is open to the idea but wanted that fight to take place in her home country of Mexico. It seems that although the UFC is interested in going to Mexico, there is no plan for an event there right now.
