Las Vegas, NV — Flyweight Antonina Shevchenko made history alongside sister/champion Valentina at UFC 255 on Saturday.
The siblings became the first sisters in UFC history to compete on the same card at the event. And to add the icing to the cake, they both came out victorious.
Following the bout, Shevchenko (Antonina, that is) told reporters including Cageside Press that the duo had had a “perfect training camp.”
“We were together, did the same thing, same atmosphere every day in the training. Nobody’s complaining, me supporting her, she’s supporting me,” the Kyrgyzstani fighter stated. In her fight, Antonina finished Brazil’s Ariane Lipski by TKO in the second round.
While it would be great to continue competing on the same card as her sister, “I don’t think we can manage like this. So if there will be [times] that we fight apart, I will accept it anyway,” Shevchenko said backstage at the UFC Apex.
What surprised many about “La Pantera’s” performance on Saturday was how dominant her grappling appeared. Lipski herself is no slouch on the ground, and her kneebar submission of Luana Carolina from July is in the running for Submission of the Year.
Of course, it wasn’t as if Shevchenko had been neglecting that area previously. “Before, we also worked on my grappling and wrestling and striking. It wasn’t like we didn’t work [on it]. It just, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work,” she stated. “Sometimes a fighter comes to the fight in one mood, sometimes in another mood.”
“I’m in martial arts since I was seven years old. It’s more than 20 years. And every fight is different,” the 36-year old Muay Thai specialist added. So the improvement was “just the time. And I definitely feel more confident in grappling and wrestling and especially on mixing it altogether, because it’s an MMA fight, you have to be confident in this style. I’m very glad that I could show [it] today and perform good in this way. Because we worked on this so much.”
Watch the full UFC 255 post-fight press conference with Antonina Shevchenko above.
