The UFC Legacy belt has two plates with eight gems each. Now Shevchenko has become the first champion to fill up one plate with victory rubies.

Valentina Shevchenko has just made history again as the first UFC champion to fill up an entire plate with ruby slots on their championship belt.

The UFC debuted their new ‘UFC Legacy Championship Belt’ back in January 2019 and in addition to a design overhaul, the new strap included two octagon-shaped plates on each side of the main facade. Each plate contains 8 white gemstones which are replaced by rubies as the champ racks up title victories.

With her win over Alexa Grasso at UFC 306 last month, Shevchenko has now won 8 title fights, completely filling her first plate with rubies. “Bullet” showed off the impressive results on Instagram.

“Hard to express the feelings of the image of my UFC Champions plate a few moments ago,” Shevchenko wrote. “All eight rubies — each a testament to sweat, struggle, and triumph. For me this is more than achievement; it’s the spirit of the true martial arts alive and roaring within me.”

“Can’t wait to finally touch and have the honor to wear the plate with the belt!”

Shevchenko won the vacant UFC women’s flyweight title in a fight against Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 231 in 2018, earning herself one of the last original-style UFC belts. She got a new Legacy belt at UFC 238 with a headkick KO win over Jessica Eye. From there she earned rubies against Liz Carmouche, Katlyn Chookagian, Jennifer Maia, Jessica Andrade, Lauren Murphy, and Talia Santos before losing her first fight in four and a half years to Alexa Grasso.

A questionable draw with Grasso followed, and then Shevchenko recaptured her belt to become a two-time UFC champion in September 2024. Eight title fight wins, eight rubies.

For now, it sounds like Shevchenko is content to stay at 125 pounds to keep defending her belt, and why not with new names like Manon Fiorot and Rose Namajunas in the wings to challenge her. And maybe another fight with Grasso? Far, far in the future?

“I’m not discarding any opportunities,” she told Bodog Canada regarding another move up to 135 pounds. “I’m not saying something like, ‘No!’ But yeah, when I recover from the last fight and we go back and see my team, my manager, we will make the decision.”

“Probably for me to go up to bantamweight, it would have to pass some time to build up back my muscles. Spending so long at flyweight, I kind of get smaller. But if I decide to move up, it has to be right.”

For now, the right place is women’s flyweight, where Valentina has already passed Jedrzejcyk (5) and Ronda Rousey (6) for most women’s title defenses (7) and is now approaching all-time greats like Amanda Nunes (11) and Anderson Silva (11) in title fight wins (9).