Preview: UFC 306 ‘O’Malley vs. Dvalishvili’

UFC Women’s Flyweight Championship

#1 WP4P | Alexa Grasso (16-3-1, 8-3-1 UFC) vs. #3 WP4P | Valentina Shevchenko (23-4-1, 12-3-1 UFC)

ODDS: Grasso (-135), Shevchenko (+114)

UFC 306: O'Malley vs. Dvalishvili Saturday at 10 ET on ESPN+. Order Now!
A long-overdue trilogy fight takes place for the women’s flyweight title, and while this remains a well-matched series of bouts, it does seem like the time is right for the division to move on. By 2023, it did seem like Shevchenko’s dominant reign over the proceedings at 125pounds was nearing its end. Initially neck-and-neck with Amanda Nunes as the top bantamweight on the UFC roster, “Bullet” cut down to flyweight in 2018 and immediately announced herself as the division’s biggest problem, laying a one-sided thrashing on Priscila Cachoeira that remains one of the most dominant displays in the promotion’s history. After eventually winning the vacant title against Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Shevchenko went about turning back all comers without much issue over the better part of the next three years. The marketing of Shevchenko as some sort of explosive striker was a bit of false advertisement, save for her brutal head kick finish of Jessica Eye in her first title defense, but it was hard to argue that she was levels ahead of the field at 125 pounds. She would neutralize her opponents with powerful counters to slow down the pace, and failing that, her ace in the hole has always been an impressively strong clinch and wrestling game, with both submissions and ground-and-pound to back it up. Taila Santos was one of Shevchenko’s more anonymous title challengers by the time her number was called in 2022, but that fight was the first sign that the division was catching up to her. Santos’ sheer physical strength took away her typical safety valves in close quarters, and the result was a split decision Shevchenko victory that easily could have gone the other way. With a new wave of young athletes making their way up the ranks, the expectation was that someone would eventually hang with Shevchenko enough physically to walk away with a win. However, it didn’t seem like many people thought that would happen against Grasso. Once Grasso got her shot in March 2023, it quickly became apparent that it would be a tough fight. Shevchenko found success slowing Grasso down with her wrestling, but the Mexican prospect proved to be the more effective striker early on. Shevchenko eventually found her groove and seemed ready to coast out a close win in the championship rounds—until she tried a spinning kick that Grasso had scouted perfectly, as the challenger dove onto the champion’s back and eventually found a submission.

That massive upset was a nice moment for Grasso, whose UFC career had been a rollercoaster up until that point. When Grasso was signed by the UFC in 2016, the expectation was that the top strawweight prospect would serve as the face for the next wave of Mexican mixed martial arts. However, that idea seemed to quickly fall by the wayside, as Grasso followed up an electric UFC debut with a frustrating loss in what seemed set up to be a showcase against Felice Herrig. From there, Grasso’s strawweight career was generally a case of one step forward, one step back. Every win that seemed to indicate Grasso was turning a corner would soon be followed by a loss, generally through getting outwrestled. After some weight-cutting issues caused Grasso to move up to flyweight in 2020, it quickly became apparent that 125 pounds was now her ideal weight class. Beyond the additional speed advantage she now had as a striker, performances like her 2021 win over Maycee Barber showed she now had the requisite physicality to hang with the division’s best athletes in the clinch and on the mat. That led to a fairly clean rise up to her shot against Shevchenko, and with her title win, it seemed like her destiny had been fulfilled as one of the faces of the UFC’s promotional efforts South of the Border. First, there was the matter of Shevchenko’s well-deserved title rematch in September 2023. The fight itself was a solid affair, with Shevchenko winning the balance of the fight but Grasso finding more potent individual moments before it ended in a controversial split draw. As with some other high-profile controversies, the result might have captured the spirit of the fight well given what an even affair it was, but the path to getting there didn’t make much sense, with Grasso being given a 10-8 fifth round by one judge for what was far from the most dominant round of the fight. A year later, this is still a fascinating pairing, even though it does feel like the bloom is off the rose with the delay of getting this third fight done, thanks to injuries and a season of “The Ultimate Fighter” that didn’t do much to build any sort of marketable dynamic between the two. As for the fight itself, it’s hard not to just revisit how the second fight played out. Shevchenko’s wrestling will serve as a perennial threat to eat up the clock, while Grasso’s craft as a boxer and unwillingness to be cowed figures to land her some big moments for as long as this fight is on the feet. After nine rounds of fighting that have essentially been even, this can’t be anything but a coinflip. Shevchenko probably deserved to win the last fight, but between the former champion’s neutralizing style always riding a razor’s edge in terms of being enough to win, and the fact that she’s at the age where there could be a level of athletic slippage that she cannot afford, the current champ gets the benefit of the doubt. The pick is Grasso via decision.

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O’Malley vs. Dvalishvili
Grasso vs. Shevchenko
Lopes vs. Ortega
Zellhuber vs. Ribovics
Rodriguez vs. Osbourne
The Prelims