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LAS VEGAS – UFC flyweight champ Valentina Shevchenko might have been trying to intimidate Jessica Eye. If she was, it didn’t work.

Eye said the two recently were in a changing room along with Shevchenko’s sister Antonina at the UFC Performance Institute. Eye might have just thrown some shade at a training video the champ posted, so she turned the other direction to avoid the obvious awkwardness.

“As soon as I was done, I’m pretty sure I heard, ‘You’ll have chance next,’” Eye told reporters, including MMA Junkie, on Friday at the UFC PI. “I think that’s what she said, because that was the tone of what she said. But I’m really hard of hearing and not good at understanding people with accents. So I was literally like, ‘Huh?’”

Eye recently accused Shevchenko of making herself look more impressive by speeding up sparring footage, prompting a snappy comeback from the champion about the challenger’s bad hearing.

That doesn’t offend Eye. After all. you’re supposed to play a few mind games when you’re about to fight someone. It doesn’t mean you hate them. It’s part of the game.

Eye certainly wasn’t going to fight at the first provocation. She’s been through too much to throw her title shot out the window.

“I feel like I have annoyed her so much, but most things are going to be taken out of context,” Eye said. “I could say that’s stupid and the way you put the image out there, they’re going to be like, ‘She is such a terrible person. She’s a bully. She picks on people.’ I don’t know if she really sped up the video. It looks sped up, not going to lie. I know that other people have done it. Maybe they haven’t. But by saying it it annoyed a bunch of people and got things going.

“The cars were going super fast, and I know other people have done that. And I don’t blame her. Why not? Why not throw a little bit of mental tactics in there. What do you think I did to say something to her? Me and her aren’t being rude to each other. But there needs to be some kind of poking of the bear here. Two people are about to fight.”

Eye gets her first crack at a UFC title after an early octagon career that’s most politely be described as rocky. Four straight bantamweight losses nearly ended her stint in the UFC, much less any championship aspirations, but she stuck it out and eventually found traction at flyweight, where she’s fought a good chunk of her career. She’s won her past three.

Shevchenko attempts the first defense of the title she captured this past December with a win over once-dominant strawweight champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk. The fight with Eye serves as the co-main event of UFC 238 on June 8 at United Center in Chicago.

There’s no regret for Eye about the words used in the buildup. But she also doesn’t have to poke the bear all the time. Asked how Shevchenko is doing so far as a champion, she said, “I think I can do it better. I think I’ll leave it at that.”

For more from Eye, check out the video above.

For more on UFC 238, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.