During recent years UFC women’s divisions has grown tremendously. It all started in 2013 when Dana White signed Ronda Rousey as the first female inductee of UFC. After that, these women put on a show and made their name famous in every part of this world. Today we are going to have a look at the top 5 female UFC fighters of all time.
Rousey was the inaugural UFC women’s Bantamweight champion and it was the first division to be added to the UFC roster. After that UFC also added Featherweight, Flyweight, and Strawweight divisions to the promotional roster for women.
Over these years UFC has seen many dominating UFC women’s champions such as Ronda Rousey, Cris Cyborg, Holly Holm, Valentina Shevchenko, Zhang Weili, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Rose Namajunas, and many others. Today we try to elaborate on this that who are the top 5 female UFC fighters of all time.
Here goes out the list of the top 5 female UFC fighters of all time
5. Ronda Rousey
Ronda Rousey is an Olympic gold medalist in Judo and she started her MMA career in 2011. Rousey was the former Strikeforce Bantamweight champion and UFC signed her in 2012. She was the first female fighter to be added to the UFC roster.
Ronda Rousey was awarded the UFC women’s Bantamweight championship in December 2012 in the UFC on Fox: Diaz vs Henderson pre-event press conference. After that, she defended her title for the first time against Liz Carmouche on UFC 157.
Rousey scored a first-round submission win in this fight and following this victory she defended her title five more times against some of the biggest names such as Miesha Tate, Cat Zingano, and many others. She finally lost her title against Holly Holm at UFC 193 after holding the title for a number of 1,074 days.
This was the first loss of her MMA career and after that, she faced one more loss against the greatest UFC women fighter Amanda Nunes at UFC 207. Following this, she retired from MMA and joined WWE, where she again became the world champion. This makes Ronda Rousey number 5 in our list of top 5 female UFC fighters.
4. Rose Namajunas
Rose Namajunas is a two times UFC women’s strawweight champion who fought for the inaugural UFC women’s strawweight championship against Carla Esparza on the TUF season 20 finale. Esparza defeated Rose and became the first UFC women’s strawweight champion.
Although, she lost her title to Joanna Jedrzejczyk in her very next fight whom Rose Namajunas defeated at UFC 217 by a first-round TKO and get the championship wrapped around her waist. She defended her title one time against Jedrzejczyk before finally losing it to Jessica Andrade on UFC 237.
After that Rose Namajunas came back even stronger and in the co-main event of UFC 261 she produced a major upset against Zhang Weili and claimed the UFC women’s strawweight title for the second time. This made Rose Namajunas enter into our list of top 5 female UFC fighters of all time.
3. Cris Cyborg
Cris Cyborg is one of the biggest names in women’s MMA around the world. She is the only fighter in MMA history, male or female, to hold a world championship across four major MMA promotions around the world.
Cyborg made her UFC debut against Leslie Smith on UFC 198 and then she fought against Tonya Evinger on UFC 214 for the vacant UFC women’s featherweight championship. Cyborg won this fight by a third-round TKO and got the championship wrapped around her waist.
She defended the two times after this before finally losing it to Amanda Nunes on UFC 232. Cyborg holds the title for 517 days and after her loss against Nunes, she parted ways with UFC. Cris Cyborg is currently fighting for Bellator and she is the current Bellator women’s featherweight champion. Cris Cyborg is no surprise to our list of top 5 female UFC fighters of all time.
2. Valentina Shevchenko
Valentina Shevchenko is one of the most dominating female champions on the UFC roster. She made her debut in 2015 against Sarah Kaufman on UFC on Fox: Dos Anjos vs Cerrone 2. Shevchenko fought against Amanda Nunes in her very second fight but faced a unanimous decision loss in this one.
After that, she challenged Nunes for the Bantamweight title on UFC 215 but she again faced a split decision loss. Following these losses, Shevchenko made her Flyweight debut and defeated Joanna Jedrzejczyk to become the UFC women’s flyweight champion.
Valentina Shevchenko has defended the title five times since then. She is growing absolutely ruthless day by day and her dominance in the UFC Flyweight division made her land in our list of top 5 female UFC fighters of all time.
1. Amanda Nunes
Amanda Nunes is one of the biggest names in women’s MMA around the world. She is a two divisions UFC women’s champion who is also the number one pound-for-pound female UFC fighter. There may be any women’s UFC champions who never faced a loss against Nunes.
Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Cris Cyborg, Valentina Shevchenko, Holly Holm, Germaine De Randamie, and the list for losses against Amanda Nunes just goes on. She is the only women fighter in UFC history to hold two different titles at the same time.
No woman ever has matched the level of Amanda Nunes’s greatness until now that made her on number one spot on the list of top 5 female UFC fighters of all time.
Also Read: Top 5 fiercest UFC rivalries.
