"She is human" - Lauren Murphy is confident of dispelling the invincible air surrounding Valentina Shevchenko

Ahead of her co-main event fight with Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 266, Lauren Murphy has stated that she is not daunted by her opponent's impressive reign of dominance at 125 pounds.

Valentina Shevchenko has not lost a fight at flyweight in her career. She's also defeated some top-level opposition, including Joanna Jędrzejczyk, Jessica Andrade and Julianna Pena.

However, Lauren Murphy is no pushover. She is currently riding a five-fight winning streak that was enough to grant her a title shot. Despite that, the moment the fight with Shevchenko was announced, Murphy became an instant heavy underdog on the betting markets. There appears to be a general consensus within the MMA community that Murphy will struggle to mount a challenge against the champ.

That does not appear to be affecting Lauren Murphy in the slightest. She recently spoke to Sportskeeda MMA's Andrew Whitelaw to discuss the upcoming matchup, as well as her underdog status in the fight.

Lauren Murphy stated the following in regards to Valentina Shevchenko:

"Everybody's human and we all make mistakes and we all have weaknesses... Valentina's a great champion and I'm very honored to face her, but she is human, you know. She is human."

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Lauren Murphy on how she visualizes her fight with Valentina Shevchenko playing out

Due to the chaotic nature of MMA, it is often very hard to pick a single outcome for any given fight. That is exactly the mentality that Lauren Murphy holds in terms of how she visualizes her route to victory at UFC 266. She told Sportskeeda MMA:

"There's a million ways a fight can go. Sometimes I visualize how tough of a fight it's going to be and grinding it out. Making it gritty until the very end and going all five rounds with her. Sometimes I visualize, you know, taking her back and choking her out. Sometimes I visualize, you know, kicking her in the head. So, there's just so many different ways to win a fight that, yeah, I visualize as many different ways as I can come up with."

Lauren Murphy and Valentina Shevchenko face off against each other this weekend at UFC 266. They co-headline the event. The card is topped by a featherweight title fight between Alexander Volkanovski and Brian Ortega. The card also features the return of Nick Diaz, who has not competed since 2015.

You can check out our full interview with Lauren Murphy ahead of UFC 266 below: