Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Pound-for-Pound Women

Welcome again folks, this time to Sherdog's list of the 10 greatest female fighters ever, pound-for-pound. This list was compiled based on a weighted poll of 12 Sherdog contributors, and I will note where my own views deviated considerably from the consensus. Personally though, the appeal of any such list isn't the exact order or who was included or excluded, but the actual discussion of each entry. Anyone can come up with a list with no further commentary and it's no more “right” than another. However, the best such lists have entertaining and informative explanations, which is the goal I hope to accomplish.

A word about criteria: My main measure for this list was greatness for one’s era and how long that era lasted. I believe the majority of other contributors used a similar rubric. Ranking historical fighters based on who would beat whom doesn’t make sense, since the division as a whole keeps improving and evolving. That's equally true for the women, who didn't appear in the Ultimate Fighting Championship until 2013. There has been a large improvement in the quality of WMMA every single year since the 2000s.

By way of honorable mention, our women's pound-for-pound poll featured a number of current and former greats who received at least one vote, but not quite enough to crack the Top 10. In descending order, they are: Weili Zhang, Ayaka Hamasaki, Jessica Andrade, Marloes Coenen, Julia Budd and Tara LaRosa. In contrast with previous entries in this series, Zhang will get her own entry in this article, since the voting took place before she won her UFC strawweight title back from Carla Esparza earlier this month.

Continue Reading » Honorable Mention