Kyte: Right. In theory, she should have an edge because she’s natural to the weight class and has been in there with bigger, stronger opposition in the past and done well. She was in there twice with Nunes, and Liz Carmouche, who is a bulldog, Jennifer Maia, Taila Santos, and Manon Fiorot.
I agree —it’ll be interesting.
For me, I’m always, always curious in situations like this where fighters are a little older and maybe towards the end, at what point do we start to see a little slippage? At what point does it start to creep in there?
Shevchenko is 37, she’ll be 38 in March, and Zhang is 36 —nothing crazy, but they’ve both been doing this for a while, and at some point, does it just show up a little? When you’re this good, this well-rounded, and you’re fighting someone else who is at that elite level, a couple of percentage points of slippage can change the outcome of a fight.
Chartier: You see it with lots of people —there is that one fight where they start to slip a little, and then it just goes from there.
Kyte: I think these are two people who can avoid it for longer than most because they’re that talented and so mentally strong in their belief and drive, but at some point, stuff just starts to erode a little naturally.
We talked about Shevchenko being a counter-striker —at some point, the speed and quickness of those counters recedes just a little, and when you’re facing someone as good as Weili, it doesn’t need to be much.
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