‘Dangerous’ Adds Herself To P4P List

Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images

The up-and-coming Ditcheva just took out a former UFC contender and made it look easy. That makes her not just a top flyweight but top ten pound-for-pound fighter in her eyes. With her…


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Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images

The up-and-coming Ditcheva just took out a former UFC contender and made it look easy. That makes her not just a top flyweight but top ten pound-for-pound fighter in her eyes.

With her big second round TKO win over Taila Santos at the PFL 2024 Championships, Dakota Ditcheva is done being humble about her place in the pecking order of WMMA.

Ditcheva has been wrecking her way through the ranks of the PFL since 2022 and is now 9-0 with 9 finishes in the promotion. But until she faced Santos in the finals of the flyweight tournament, she was missing that name opponent that would allow her to compare herself to competition in the UFC.

She has that now: Taila Santos took UFC flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko to a hotly contested split decision, and went the distance with No. 3 ranked Erin Blanchfield. She beat former UFC title contender Liz Carmouche in the PFL semi-finals. And Ditcheva still took Santos out in under 10 minutes, hitting the tough Brazilian with a nasty body shot that buckled her and then following up with some mean punches to the liver.

In Dakota’s mind, that puts her at the top of her division across the sport, and right into the women’s pound-for-pound rankings too.

“Yeah, I am [a top five flyweight],” Ditcheva said on The Ariel Helwani Show. “I would probably say top ten [pound-for-pound]. I feel like I’ve got a lot more to prove, a lot more years of the sport to kind of prove myself a little bit. Them fighters have been around for a long time, so I’ll say top 10 pound-for-pound.”

“Especially now that I’ve beat a name like Santos. She’s never been stopped. Shevchenko didn’t stop her. People thought she beat [Shevchenko] and now what can people really say? Blanchfield went five rounds with her. There’s been plenty of fighters that have had to go five rounds with her, and I’ve just got in there and made it look like another can on the list that people always comment on my stuff. So I feel like I’m definitely in the conversation now.”

“I’m not saying I’m up there at the top, but you definitely have to take me serious.”

We’ve been taking Ditcheva seriously since we found out who her mother was: former muay thai, kickboxing, and karate champion Lisa Howarth, who was trained by Thohsaphol “Master Toddy” Sitiwatjana. Howarth is a pioneer of women’s combat sports and one mean fighter — a feature that has clearly been passed on to Ditcheva, whose finishing ability comes from an intuitive ability to hurt her opponents from any angle.

As much as we’d love to see “Dangerous” jump from PFL to UFC, she’s not going anywhere any time soon.

“No, I am locked up with PFL,” she said regarding her contract status. “I will definitely be fighting for PFL next year, especially now with the women’s title. I’ve gotta defend it, and I’m not planning on abandoning that belt just yet.”

“I’m only 26, I’ve got so much more to give to PFL,” she said before questioning out loud whether she’d end up back in next year’s tournament. “I want better competition, and I want to fight better people. A big super fight would would benefit me more. Would people wanna see me back in the tournament fighting the same girls again? I’m not sure everyone would be entertained by that.”

“So I think maybe a big fight next year would be better, but I’m happy to do the tournament again because I really enjoyed it.”

One thing she made clear after her win was she wanted PFL to bring her home to Manchester for her next fight. Given how quickly her star is rising at a time where the promotion needs a new name or two, we’d be shocked if they didn’t set that up.