LOS ANGELES – One of the first questions posed to Valentina Shevchenko answered was whether she’s confident her fight will happen.

Of course, Shevchenko (15-3 MMA, 4-2 UFC) answered yes. It’s a question that normally wouldn’t pop up – but nothing about her recent career has been normal.

The UFC women’s flyweight title challenger has waited most of this year to get a crack at the belt.

She came within a few days of fighting for it at UFC 228 when her long-anticipated opponent, inaugural champ Nicco Montano (4-2 MMA, 1-0 UFC), withdrew due to a botched weight cut.

Now slated to face ex-strawweight champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk (14-2 MMA, 9-2 UFC), a three-time opponent in muay Thai, Shevchenko is less than two weeks away from another golden opportunity. She’s excited about what’s to come. She’s also thinks her whole situation could have been avoided.

“I think it would have been a better idea from the begining to make a fight for the title to have the champion from the beginning, and then to make the reality show to build the weight class at 125 pounds,” said Shevchenko, referring to the “The Ultimate Fighter 26” season that crowned Montano the first champ. “At that point, we could’ve avoid this whole mess that the champion, who’s a fake champion, didn’t want to fight, and tried to find reasons to escape the fight, and we could see that one year, there wasn’t any movement in 125.”

Montano was stripped of the title after she was unable to make the fight, and the UFC soon booked a fight between Shevchenko and Jedrzejczyk.

That wasn’t the end of the drama, though. With the promotion scrambling for a headliner at UFC 230, an attempt was made to move the fight up one month. Jedrzejczyk balked at the request, and Sijara Eubanks was briefly installed as Shevchenko’s opponent.

At a certain point, Shevchenko threw up her hands and told her team she would fight anyone at any time as long as they could set a date.

“I’m was tired of hearing about this mess – I just wanted to fight,” she remembers. “I will do my part, I will go to the gym, and you let me know when you’re ready and will say the date and opponent. Doesn’t matter who, I’ll be ready.”

Eventually, the UFC enlisted two-division champion Daniel Cormier to take on Derrick Lewis, and Jedrzejczyk and Shevchenko was rebooked for its original date.

It’s been a long and strange journey to get to her desired destination. But the worry is over for Shevchenko. She expects no further holdups in her new class.

“The 125 pound division, it will be the most interesting division to watch, and the most active,” she said. “Because we can see from 115 pounds, a lot of girls will go up, and from 135, they’ll go down to 125. It will be some kind of division where all the action will be.”

There’s been quite a bit of action outside the cage. Shevchenko is looking forward to making it happen where it counts.

For more on UFC 231, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.