Valentina Shevchenko and Demetrious Johnson make their flyweight GOAT case ... for each other

When Valentina Shevchenko steps into the Octagon late Saturday night at UFC 315, forgive her if she does a double-take. She will look across the cage and see, for the first time in just shy of three years, an opponent not named Alexa Grasso. Shevchenko is finally moving on from her co-star in a historic trilogy that pinballed the women's flyweight belt back and forth. In this weekend's co-main event in Montreal, she will put the strap on the line against Manon Fiorot (ESPN+ PPV, 10 p.m. ET).

It feels weird to call this Shevchenko's first title defense, because, at 37 years old, she has ruled the 125-pound division for a great majority of the division's eight-year existence. But along with being matched with a new dance partner, she now is cast in an unfamiliar role of newly crowned champ looking to renew the old magic.

A fresh start, one might call it. A new beginning.

One might call it those things -- if one were not 24-4-1 Valentina Shevchenko.

"It's definitely not a new beginning," Shevchenko told ESPN last week. "I would say it's a journey continuing. We cannot disregard all the experience and start everything from zero, not at all. All of the experiences that I have had -- even when I had to struggle a little bit -- it just made me a stronger version of myself. So no, not a new beginning, just continuing on the same beautiful journey of martial arts."

Shevchenko's martial arts journey has indeed been a thing of beauty. Starting when she was a teenager in Kyrgyzstan, she won eight Muay Thai world championships in just over a decade. She still was a teen when she made her debut in MMA and scored finishes in her first seven professional fights. Soon after joining the UFC in 2015, Shevchenko collected victories over a former champion, Holly Holm, and a future titleholder, Julianna Pea.

Both of those fights were at bantamweight, as were Shevchenko's two tight losses to Amanda Nunes, the second one a split decision with the championship up for grabs. Then, when the UFC created a flyweight division in 2017, Shevchenko moved to her natural weight class and needed barely a year to secure the championship. She held the title for more than four years. Shevchenko has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that she's the greatest flyweight in the history of women's MMA. Case closed.

But might she be the best flyweight, period? Or is it sacrilege to stack up Shevchenko's achievements against those of the legendary Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson? He ruled the UFC's 125-pound men's division for nearly six years, making him king of his fiefdom for even longer than Shevchenko was queen of hers. "Mighty Mouse" is one of the names often brought up in discussions of the sport's overall GOAT, not just at 125.

Johnson, who retired from MMA in September after spending six years with One Championship, still owns the UFC record with 11 consecutive title defenses. Guess what name was first out of his mouth when he was asked in an interview three years ago who had the best chance to break his record. "Valentina Shevchenko," he said. "She continues to impress me every time she steps into the Octagon."

Shevchenko was on a run of six straight title defenses at the time, and she would add one more before Grasso upset her in 2023 in the opening salvo of the first women's trilogy in UFC history. So Shevchenko fell short of Johnson there -- but that's not the case everywhere in the record book. The UFC doesn't blend its men's and women's statistics, but ESPN Research crunched some numbers and identified several categories where Johnson and Shevchenko rank 1-2 -- in either order -- among all flyweights.

"Mighty Mouse" ranks ahead of Shevchenko in UFC title fight wins (12 for him, nine for her) and longest winning streak (13 to nine), but Shevchenko leads the 1-2 dance in top position time (1 hour, 14 minutes, 8 seconds to Johnson's 1:05:52). She is tied for second among 125-pound fighters with four knockouts, whereas Johnson had just two in the UFC, leaving him in a tie for 13th.

Of course, numbers give us just a rough sketch. To paint a picture with vivid, contextual brushstrokes, we lean on expert analysis. So let's look in the direction of two leading experts on Shevchenko and Johnson -- Shevchenko and Johnson themselves. Knowing they're too respectful as martial artists to engage in a tit-for-tat boastathon, a more sensible ask is for each to break down the greatness of the other.

Johnson: "At the beginning, Valentina was feeding on people based on her skill and technique from her kickboxing and Muay Thai background. And when she submitted people, you could see she was growing. She could do a little bit of everything, and I felt like there was nobody in her league at that time. She was always evolving, and her competition was never able to keep up until she ran into Alexa Grasso.

"That trilogy showed off a whole other side of Shevchenko's evolution, beyond her physical skills. By the third fight, she realized that when she took Grasso down, she would be better off not passing guard. In the other fights, each time Shevchenko passed guard into side control, Grasso would explode and scramble back to her feet. But in the third fight, Shevchenko took Grasso down in every round and controlled her from inside guard. Alexa couldn't get up because Valentina was the better strategist."

Shevchenko: "Oh, Demetrious, every time I watched his fights, the speed, the accuracy and the timing were all next level. He had a feel for managing movement -- his own movement and the movement of his opponent. I definitely liked to watch his fights, seeing him get better and better at using his techniques and always bringing new techniques to the Octagon.

"I don't even want to consider who is better, because there is no competition between us. He fought in male competition and I'm fighting in female competition, so we are in completely different categories. I will just say Demetrious is one of the best martial arts fighters in the world."

When prodded, Shevchenko and Johnson did compare themselves against each other in one skill that both regularly have put on display on fight nights. The victory dance.

When "Mighty Mouse" won a fight, especially by exhilarating finish, he would reel off three or four spinning kicks at center cage, followed by a backflip or some other acrobatic move. Shevchenko's more classic, ceremonial spinning celebration is a twist on a traditional dance called the Lezginka, which derives from her Central Asia upbringing.

Johnson: "I would say Valentina has the better victory dance, because that dance is from her country and it means something to her. My s--- was just from video games, stuff that I made up on the fly."