2025 seems to be the year of retirements.
First, former UFC Middleweight Champion Chris Weidman retired. Though he would walk back that retirement a few days later when he signed to GFL. Former UFC Middleweight Champion Dominick Cruz recently called it quits. Molly McCann just retired last weekend. Anthony Smith is retiring next month. There’s a couple of other names I didn’t mention. Now Antonina Shevchenko has decided to walk away for good.
The former UFC Flyweight made the official announcement that she’s stepping away from the octagon for good. Though the news doesn’t particularly come as a surprise. Antonina hasn’t fought since 2022. She recently had a son and became a pilot, so it seemed that she made the decision to leave a while ago.
This past Tuesday, it was first announced that Molly McCann and Antonina had been removed from the roster. As previously mentioned, McCann had retired at UFC London. However, joining that list of releases was Razak Alhassan as well.
It’s not clear if UFC released Antonina first, or if she gave the company her notice of retirement, but as previously stated, it seemed as if the flyweight had made that decision a while back. Antonina is the older sister of current UFC Women’s Flyweight Champion Valentina Shevchenko.
She came into the UFC in 2018 through Dana White’s Contender Series. Shevchenk made pro MMA debut in 2002 through KFK: Cup of Kyrgyzstan. She also fought in WXF: X-Impact World Championships and Phoenix FC before making the jump over to the UFC.
Her career looked promising early on as Shevchenko got two impressive wins and was riding a solid 7 - 0 MMA record, but her fight against Roxanne Modafferi put her in the loss column.
Since then, Antonina would trade wins and loses here and there, but she was never one step closer to getting into title contention. Her last fight was a split decision win over Cortney Casey. Despite the lack of UFC championships, Antonina has won several performance and fight of the night awards. She finishing off her professional MMA career with a record of 10 wins and 4 losses. Here’s wishing Antonina, Molly, and Razak the best in their future endeavors.