Joe Rogan tends to be measured but every now and again he goes into fanboy mode. One obvious case of this was during the recent interview with Valentina Shevchenko.
While Shevchenko is very dominant in her division the 125 lbs – her attempts at two division rule have been thwarted twice by Amanda Nunes. But UFC commentator, podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan seems to think Shevchenko is the Anderson Silva of our generation.
“You’re not just the UFC champion, you’re one of the best champions,” Rogan told Shevchenko. “It’s very unique to watch you fight because you’re one of those people like Anderson Silva in his prime where you’ve cleaned out your division. It’s no disrespect to your opponents, but some of your opponents, when I’m watching you fight them, I’m not thinking are they going to beat you. I’m thinking, what are you going to do to them?”
“It’s a strange position to be in where you’re almost like competing against these women but your level is so much higher than everyone else in this 125-pound division that there’s not much there for you where it’s like, ‘Valentina has to fight this woman.’ There’s no fight like that for you.”
Rogan is just the latest to flatter Shevchenko – her last opponent Lauren Murphy compared her to both Michael Jordan and Khabib Nurmagomedov:
Murphy told MMA Fighting. “It’s definitely not the outcome we wanted but, to be honest with you, it was pretty cool to be in there with a martial artist of her caliber. That’s a pretty cool experience. That must be what it’s like to go play one-on-one with Michael Jordan, or that’s how guys felt when they were competing with Khabib [Nurmagomedov], because it really was, ‘Holy s—t, this girl is really on another level.’
Rogan is not the first to compare the champion to Anderson Silva – the first was actually UFC boss Dana White:
“I really like the fight between Valentina and Andrade. And that Jessica will trample on her. She will go forward, she will put pressure, and she will make it a crazy, bright and interesting confrontation. As for Valentina Shevchenko, she is now in the same position , which Anderson Silva was once in. All people think, “Oh, she has no one to fight in the division. She dominates all opponents … “
In addition to her lucrative UFC career, Shevchenko is looking to make her acting debut in November alongside Oscar winner Halle Berry.
“You have to make it not only look real, you have to actually do it real,” Shevchenko explained. “The tiny line between a real fight and a movie fight, you have to work with your partner to feel each other. You have to feel each other to make her confident that it looks like you are throwing with your whole power but you have to know that you’re never going to damage her. But definitely when it’s filming days, we were working for like 12 hours straight doing all the sequences and everyone was tired and definitely it was a lot of pressure. Physical pressure.
“When you are tired, this is when injuries happen because you are kind of like defending the same way that you have to and it’s the same everywhere. When you’re tired, very tired, it’s more chances you’re going to get injured. We did real sparring. We did real training for the fight scenes in the movie. It was an amazing experience working with her.”