Just because you know the destination doesn’t mean you can’t learn from the journey.
And the journey we’re about to take is through a little place we like to call “history.”
Ronda Rousey is the best female MMA fighter to ever walk the planet. She’ll have a chance to further hone that reputational blade this Saturday when she meets former boxing champion Holly Holm at UFC 193, going down from Melbourne, Australia.
Rousey’s the tops, but there’s a legion of elite female fighters, past and present, to discover. The sport is so new that it’s relatively easy to look back and see the bones of its construction, its founding legends, its inaugural champions. The old and new schools have each spawned magnificent fighters, while and well before Rousey became a household name.
Let us now rank and recognize some of those greats.
These are the 10 best female MMA fighters ever. They are listed based on records, accomplishments, their overall place in the sport, skills and average strength of opponent. The division presented in each slide is the weight class in which the fighter primarily competes or competed.
Disagree with any selections? Ah, never mind. I’m sure that won’t happen.