Heartwarming moment Valentina Shevchenko consoles Joanna Jedrzejczyk after she retires

Valentina Shevchenko consoled former foe Joanna Jedrzejczyk after her retirement at UFC 275.

Last Saturday night at UFC 275 in Singapore, Joanna Jedrzejczyk suffered a knockout loss at the hands of Weili Zhang at the end of what proved to be an electric rematch from their 2020 collision. Zhang just seemed to have Jedrzejczyk’s number and she wound up making that fact pretty clear with a spinning back fist to vault herself right back into title contention.

Valentina Shevchenko, meanwhile, just about scraped past Taila Santos as she successfully defended her flyweight crown for the seventh time.

The two former rivals ran into each other earlier during fight week and after Jedrzejczyk announced in her post-fight interview that she’d be retiring after the Zhang loss, Shevchenko caught up with her backstage to offer the Polish star a warm embrace.

In addition, the champ also caught up with UFC.com to give her thoughts on the 34-year-old’s iconic mixed martial arts career.

“Joanna, she’s amazing – as a person and as a martial artist. You know sometimes, we have these kinds of people that we kind of like, every time going together. Through the majority part of my martial arts life, we were coming together. Muay Thai, here in UFC, MMA, and it’s amazing. She inspired so many young generations, so many women to be martial artists. She is a very bright character, technical, and I think she did such a great job in martial arts that she deserves love and respect.”

Back in their Muay Thai days, Valentina Shevchenko managed to defeat Joanna Jedrzejczyk on three separate occasions.

Fast forward to December 2018 and they were meeting for the vacant UFC women’s flyweight championship at UFC 231, with a unanimous decision triumph for