Grasso shocks Shevchenko with submission to win UFC flyweight title

Alexa Grasso pulled off one of the biggest championship upsets in UFC history on Saturday night, putting an end to the longest active title reign in the promotion.

Grasso submitted Valentina Shevchenko with a rear-naked choke at the 4:34 mark of the fourth round to capture the women's flyweight title in the UFC 285 co-main event in Las Vegas.

Seemingly en route to another successful title defense, Shevchenko missed on a spinning back kick, and Grasso closed the distance and immediately hopped on her back. She locked in the submission with both hooks in and forced Shevchenko to tap.

With the victory, Grasso is the first Mexican-born female to become a UFC champion. She's just the third Mexico native to claim UFC gold - and all three did so this year, with Brandon Moreno winning the undisputed flyweight title in January and Yair Rodriguez capturing the interim featherweight belt in February.

"Please pinch me because I feel like I am dreaming," Grasso said in her postfight interview. "I dreamt of this moment for so long."

All three judges had Shevchenko winning 29-28 going into the fourth round. Grasso edged Shevchenko in Round 1, landing a few shots on the feet. She made it clear early that she was the better boxer. But Shevchenko landed several takedowns in the second and third rounds and racked up a considerable amount of control time.

In the end, though, Grasso saw an opening on the feet and quickly turned that into a career-altering submission win. In fact, she said she trained the exact back-take she used on Shevchenko, expecting that the former champion would throw spinning kicks.

"I trained every single day that (move) because I knew that she does those spinning things," Grasso said.

Shevchenko, one of the greatest and most dominant women's MMA fighters in history, was attempting to defend the 125-pound belt for the eighth time. She was riding a nine-fight winning streak and was undefeated in the division. This was her first loss since falling to Amanda Nunes in a women's bantamweight title bout in 2017. Shevchenko had never been finished in the UFC and had never lost by submission.

"This is kind of what happens in mixed martial arts," Shevchenko said in her postfight interview. "You're winning the fight, all rounds ... (there's) no doubt, and a stupid situation can change the whole game."

She added: "Congratulations to Alexa. I know that I'm stronger. If not (for) this spinning kick, it would be a different result."

Grasso broke out in the MMA scene during a two-year stint in the women's promotion Invicta FC, where she put together an undefeated record of 4-0 from 2014-16. Then, in 2016, she signed with the UFC as a highly touted strawweight prospect. However, she experienced mixed results in the first three years of her UFC run, alternating wins and losses in her first six appearances.

Everything changed in 2020 when Grasso moved up to women's flyweight due to her struggling to make the 115-pound limit. She earned high-profile wins over Maycee Barber, Joanne Wood, and Viviane Araujo - the latter of which served as a UFC Fight Night main event last October - to earn a shot at Shevchenko's title. Grasso was ranked No. 6 in the division going into her first UFC title fight.

The 29-year-old remains unbeaten - now 5-0 - since moving up to 125 pounds. Grasso's most recent defeat came in 2019 against former strawweight titleholder Carla Esparza.