In the old days, before women broke into the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Valentina Shevchenko was relegated to fighting in marginal Muay Thai circuits. But since 2011, when the UFC first added a women’s division, Shevchenko and her sisters have taken over.
“Back then, every time I would walk to the ring with the music, we would dance together,” she said Saturday night. “In MMA, I’m more focused on the fights. But sometimes after a fight, if it’s a very good fight, I can dance.”
Shevchenko on Saturday roundly defeated Julianna Peña in front of 13,233 fans in Denver after flipping Peña from the bottom position into an arm bar submission. It was another impressive win for the 28-year-old from Kyrgyzstan .
Shevchenko’s victory, which put her in line for a championship bout against Amanda Nunes in the 135-pound bantamweight division once dominated by Ronda Rousey, drew more than 2 million viewers on Fox’s prime-time national telecast from Denver, according to overnight Nielsen ratings
The Denver fight card included a who was knocked out early in the second round by Miami’s Jorge Masvidal. UFC earned a Pepsi Center gate profit of $1,024,340, according to UFC president Dana White.
“Denver’s awesome,” White said. “Every time we come to Denver, it’s amazing. The crowd here is incredible. It’s on big Fox, and to do more than a million dollar gate, I love this city. I love coming back here, even though it’s cold.”
But the card, at least on TV, was carried by the women.
Shevchenko-Peña led a two-hour broadcast that drew 2.02 million viewers in an overnight estimate. Those numbers for live sporting events typically go up when more accurate figures become available later. It was a disappointing total for the UFC on a quiet night, falling short of an NBA game on ABC between the L.A. Clippers and Golden State Warriors that drew 2.58 million viewers.
But the disappointment is relative. Since the UFC added the bantamweight division in 2012, then the 115-pound featherweight division in 2014, female fighters have proven a big draw.
When Aurora’s Michelle Waterson took down Paige VanZant with a rear-naked choke hold on Dec. 17 in Sacramento, the fight became the UFC’s most-watched bout on Fox since 2013. Behind the women’s main event, the card drew 3.178 million viewers, .
Shevchenko’s previous fight, a unanimous decision victory over Holly Holm in July at Chicago, drew 2.95 million viewers on Fox, the ninth-best UFC broadcast on the network, according to the Yahoo report. Shevchenko’s rise through the UFC after her time on the fringes in world amateur Muay Thai and kickboxing mirrors that of women in general in MMA. And it came on only recently: Strikeforce was the first major MMA circuit to field a women’s champion, in 2010.
“We didn’t have a lot of opponents in MMA, not many girls,” Shevchenko said of her time before the UFC. “In 2010, the world of women’s MMA grew up extremely.”
