John Wood, the coach and fiancé of flyweight title contender Joanne Calderwood is confident she’ll beat Valentina Shevchenko.
Popular Scottish fighter Calderwood was supposed to face Shevchenko for the 125lb title on June 6 at UFC 251 in Perth Australia. Calderwood earned her shot at the champion by defeating Andrea Lee via split decision last time out.
The ongoing global pandemic has meant all events have been postponed. While UFC president Dana White is planning to hold some events in Florida travel bans mean this flyweight title fight is unlikely to be one of them. Nonetheless Wood says Calderwood is still ready to go whenever she gets the call.
“Jojo, she’s fired up,” Wood told MMA Junkie. “She’s been waiting for this opportunity her whole career and, obviously, for the last year we’ve been kinda on deck, knowing this was going to be the eventual projection of her career, to fight for the title. So, when it got announced we were obviously excited and stoked, and then literally right after, it got shut down, so we figured it was going to be pushed back anyway.
“The fight’s definitely going to get postponed and pushed back to what I’m hearing is maybe August. Jojo stays ready, she’s one of those people that just trains religiously every day. If she’s not in Syndicate (MMA), she’s at the PI and right now, with both of those being closed, she’s doing her home workouts. We’ve got a full gym set up in the garage and inside the house.”
Wood says when the fight finally does come around they’ll be ready and he has no doubt we’ll be seeing a new flyweight champion crowned, he concluded.
“She’s ready when the time comes, she’ll get in there and, no doubt in my mind, you’ll see a new champ coming out of that division.”
Do you think Joanne Calderwood can dethrone Valentina Shevchenko?
