Valentina Shevchenko implores Manon Fiorot not to follow up on retirement wager after UFC 315

Valentina Shevchenko vanquished Manon Fiorot at UFC 315, but she has no intention of being the one responsible for Fiorot hanging up the gloves.

That stipulation was part of the pre-fight talk for Saturday’s co-main event, which saw Shevchenko win a back-and-forth contest against Fiorot to successfully retain her flyweight title. Fiorot, 35, proposed that Shevchenko retire if she defeated her, with Shevchenko responding that Fiorot should follow through with the same stakes should she lose.

For Shevchenko, that wager was never meant to be taken seriously, and she implored Fiorot not to retire while speaking to the media post-fight.

“To be very clear, before the fight Manon [suggested] that if she won, I retire,” Shevchenko said. “I responded to her, if I won, she retires. So I completely don’t want her to retire. This is what I really don’t want her to follow her words because I feel it’s unfair for the fighter because someone put [the words] in her mouth to promote the fight or something like that and now she feels she has to retire? No, don’t follow your words, please stay fighting.”

Shevchenko, who turned 37 this past March, likely wouldn’t have actually retired either had she lost, but that’s a decision she gets to put off for another day after putting together another championship performance. “Bullet” found a way to stave off the aggressive approach of the larger Fiorot, doing just enough across five rounds to earn 48-47 scores across the board.

She credited her recently retired sister Antonina with helping her to prepare for Fiorot’s southpaw style.

“During my fighting career, my main partner, one of the main partners was my sister and she’s southpaw,” Shevchenko said. “Her kicks and her punches are incomparable. So the speed, the power, and everything and working with her during all these years is kind of like, now when Manon throws the kicks, I kind of see them from very, very far.”

Shevchenko now holds all the cards again as she gears up for another championship fight, with strawweight champion Zhang Weili expressing interest in making that dream matchup happen.

However, flyweight contender Natalia Silva continued her hot streak Saturday, dominating former 125-pound champion Alexa Grasso to improve to 7-0 in the UFC and state her own case to be the No. 1 contender.

Shevchenko doesn’t have a preference between the two, preferring to leave the decision to the fans.

“Everyone was saying Weili or Natalia?” Shevchenko said. “So I don’t know, maybe fans can pay some role in that and if they can join my OnlyFans page and drop some messages who they want to see me fight next, we’ll compare who’s next.”