The UFC is putting together a women’s flyweight showcase on in the month of May. MMA Junkie was the first to report that the promotion has finalized a flyweight matchup between top 15 contenders, Andrea Lee (11-5) and Antonina Shevchenko (9-2).
The matchup will take place at the UFC‘s Fight Night on May 15th. Worth noting that this is the second matchup of top fifteen flyweights on this card. Last week, it was announced that top ten contenders, Katlyn Chookagian and Viviane Araujo would also be meeting on the May 15th card.
On top of these announcements, we also learned yesterday that at UFC 261 in April, Valentina Shevchenko will defend her title against Jessica Andrade. This is looking like it will be a pivotal few week’s for the women’s flyweight division.
Antonina Shevchenko is the older sister of the UFC‘s flyweight champion. She will be making the walk for the sixth time with the promotion and she’s 3-2 so far. Her only two losses came against top ten contenders, Roxanne Modafferi and Katlyn Chookagian.
Both of those fights showed an area of weakness for Shevchenko. That weakness was her ground game. Shevchenko is a former Muay Thai world champion, but her ground game has needed work. However, at UFC 255 she showed a lot of improvement on her way to getting a TKO over Ariane Lipski.
UFC flyweight matchup
Standing across from Shevchenko on May 15th will be KGB, Andrea Lee. There was a lot of hype surrounding Lee just a couple of years ago. At one point, Lee was 11-2 and looked like she was knocking on the door of a UFC title shot.
However, that is where things have taken a turn. Lee suffered back-to-back split decision losses to JoJo Calderwood and Lauren Murphy. After those two losses, Lee dropped another decision to Roxanne Modafferi.
While there’s no shame in losing to any of those top ten contenders, it showed that Andrea was no where ready for a UFC title shot. Having lost three fights in a row, this is a massive fight for Andrea Lee. If she’s able to knock off Antonina Shevchenko, it could be the start of a run back up the rankings. Should be a good one in May.