The spectacle that figures to take hold of The Sphere, where UFC 306 takes over the unique Las Vegas event space this weekend — timed just ahead of Mexican Independence Day on Tuesday — has been promoted during CEO Dana White’s recent media barnstorm to lean heavily into telling the narrative of Mexico’s famed combat sports history.
This marks the second September in a row in which Noche UFC promises to celebrate in Nevada the United States’ direct neighbor along the southern border, and that budding tradition comes packaged once again with the lone current champion from Mexico, Alexa Grasso, defending her title against ex-champ Valentina Shevchenko.
Historic as flyweight titleholder — Grasso is on her own as the first woman from her nation to win UFC gold — she and Shevchenko will forge history for their gender as well in the organization’s first trilogy fight between two women when they square off in the co-main event Saturday (10 p.m., ESPN+ pay-per-view).
“It means a lot,” Grasso recently told The Post regarding her historic three-fight series. “It’s showing how hard I’m working. I love to put everything I have in every single fight, and this is the result of all these years of hard work.”
Grasso-Shevchenko III isn’t a rubber match, though, as Grasso won the first last March via fourth-round submission and then salvaged a controversial draw in last year’s rematch.
As such, Grasso could exit the octagon Saturday having never lost in three consecutive matchups against her rival; she could also find herself knotted with Shevchenko at 1-1-1 if the title changes hands.
In that way, their series could wind up the same as Grasso’s countryman and fellow 125-pounder Brandon Moreno during his UFC-first tetralogy against Deiveson Figueiredo, a series that covered 25 consecutive months of their careers before Moreno won the finale to gain a 2-1-1 career edge.
It’s not a thought Grasso (16-3-1, six finishes) prefers to entertain — but she expects a fourth fight would be necessary in that case.
“If that happens, you must give me a shot. Of course,” Grasso said with a laugh.
As it stands, Grasso and Shevchenko have been staring each other down since the original fight was booked in January 2023, so an immediate fourth fight between them would assuredly keep them paired into the new year.
Perhaps some fighters could find it exhausting to devote literal years of a career competing against the same opponent, but Grasso calmly assures that’s not her.
“It’s just a fight,” said Grasso, who earlier this year starred opposite Shevchenko (23-4-1, 15 finishes) as opposing coaches on “The Ultimate Fighter” for some extra time around one another, “and I love to prepare myself for every single fight camp.”
By this point, with nearly 45 minutes of shared cage time between their two championship clashes, there figure to be few surprises.
Each has been content to test their respective kickboxing skills, with both 31-year-old Grasso and Shevchenko, a 36-year-old originally from Kyrgyzstan, having their moments.
The key difference in Grasso’s case has been in her opportunistic initiation of grappling, which set up the fight-ending face crank in the first bout and led to a pulse-pounding final minute of the rematch in which her late surge of strikes on the mat was enough to get one judge to score the fifth round a baffling 10-8.
That score pivoted what would have been a split-decision victory for Shevchenko into a stunning draw, leaving a particularly salty taste in the challenger’s mouth ever since.
Shevchenko has maintained a belief that the heavily pro-Mexican crowd at T-Mobile Arena last Mexican Independence Day played role in swaying the battle-tested trio of veteran Nevada-licensed judges, expressing a desire to not fight on another Noche UFC event.
And while Shevchenko told several outlets — including The Post — in June that her understanding was that their third fight would not be centered around Mexico and his combat sports heritage … well, she was mistaken.
While she couldn’t speak for where Shevchenko got that impression, Grasso had never thought that to be the case.
“I was 100 percent [sure] that it was going to be like this,” Grasso said plainly of UFC 306’s celebration of her nation’s fighting history.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s really cool,” Grasso says of the opportunity to anchor two consecutive Noche UFC events as their highest-placed fighters from Mexico on each fight card. “It talks about how hard I’m working with my team, how hard we are pushing these days. All of the Mexicans in the fight card are amazing.”
