Valentina Shevchenko spoke to FanSided about dealing with success, training with her sister, and her upcoming title defense against Liz Carmouche.

Valentina Shevchenko is deservedly recognized as one of the most skilled fighters on the planet. From her picture-perfect Muay Thai, to her wide array of trips and throws from the clinch, to her surprisingly tight ground game, Shevchenko is the total package. Across her 20 professional fights, she’s lost to just two women.

This weekend at UFC Uruguay, just nine weeks removed from her devastating knockout of Jessica Eye, Shevchenko has an opportunity to get back one of those losses when she defends her flyweight title against Liz Carmouche.

Shevchenko and Carmouche first fought in 2010, practically a lifetime in fight years. Shevchenko, then a 7-0 professional, lost via TKO to the then 4-0 Carmouche. With so much time passing since their first encounter, Shevchenko recognizes that things will have necessarily changed over the years.

“Ten years is a lot of time,” Shevchenko told FanSided. “Even the person that doesn’t want to change will change. I’ve fought so many different girls. I’ve fought different styles of opponents, different weight classes, different characters. If you compare me [then] to me today, I’m a person who has more experience. Experience makes the difference.”

That experience should come in handy against Carmouche, who is a physically imposing and well-versed grappler. Many expect Carmouche to try to bring the fight to the mat, but Shevchenko seems unworried, confident in her own skills.

“It’s one thing to want to put me on the ground, it’s another thing to be able to do it. It’s two different things… My previous opponent, Jessica Eye, wanted to put me down but she couldn’t do it because I put her down. Like I say, it’s one thing to want to do it. It’s another thing to be able to do it.”

Shevchenko makes her way to Uruguay directly from Newark, NJ, where she was cornering her older sister Antonina to her second UFC victory. For some, it seems odd for Shevchenko to travel out of her way to corner her sister just one week before her own title defense. But for Shevchenko and her sister, who are inseparable, there’s nothing odd about it at all; this is the only way they know.

“We have to do it because we don’t have another option,” she said. “I know that I have to be in her corner; she knows that she has to be in my corner. That’s why we have to find out a way to deal with all these things happening right now.”

Shevchenko and her sister share an unbreakable bond, one that has been strengthened through decades of a shared passion for martial arts.

“We have our common things that we share together in mixed martial arts. This is what unites us. We spend all our time together, hanging out together, training together, traveling together. We are very close.”

Underlying that relationship is respect. Because Valentina is the younger of the Shevchenko sisters, that has always meant showing respect for Antonina.

“Everything in our family is [about] respect, respect of the older. Because in our culture of Kyrgyzstan, a central Asian country, it’s all about respect to the person that’s older than you. That’s even more in martial arts. You have to have respect for the students who are older than you and have spent more time in martial arts. You have to know your place. In my family it was everything.”

Respectful as they may be, make no mistake: the Shevchenko sisters are dangerous women. And because they each serve as the primary training partner for the other, it’s easy to see how that respectful relationship could be tested. But the younger Shevchenko gives credit to her older sister’s caring nature for maintaining a healthy relationship both in and out of the training room.

“[Antonina’s] character… it has always been to take care of me. When we were smaller she would take good care of me all the time and worry about me, what I’m doing, if I’m good. Now when we are older it’s still the same. We try to support each other. In training, yes, sometimes we are going hard because I know that if I go hard it will go easy for her [in the fight]. Everything is very healthy with sportsmanship during training.”

Shevchenko will now look to use that steady training with her sister to follow up arguably the best performance of her career. Shevchenko’s head kick knockout of Eye was both beautiful and frighteningly brutal in all the best ways. It’s a highlight any fighter would be ecstatic to add to her reel. And while Shevchenko is no doubt pleased with the outcome of that fight, she’s not putting any extra pressure on herself or changing her approach just to get another spectacular knockout.

“I’m not the type of person that just started her career, that gets success and doesn’t know how to react,” she explained. “I’ve been in martial arts for so many years. I’ve been through everything possible. You have to be focused… it’s training, it’s mental condition, and it’s the fight.”

That’s not to say that Shevchenko doesn’t want to entertain. Quite the opposite, she’s well aware that her task is to perform for the benefit of the fans.

“Of course, you can’t not think [about the fans]. It’s all tied so closely… Of course, everything a fighter is doing is for our fans, for our supporters, and for everyone who is around us.”

UFC Uruguay takes place on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019, live from the Antel Arena in Montevideo, Uruguay. Follow along with FanSided MMA for all your live results and highlights.