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From not having women on their fight cards to having four exclusive weight classes for women, UFC has come a long way.
It all started at UFC 157 when Ronda Rousey defeated Liz Carmouche to become the inaugural UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion. This was the first Women’s fight in the UFC history. After this, Dana White went on to sign a long list of WMMA fighters and now, they are an integral part of the UFC Fight Cards.
As mentioned earlier, the women now have four separate weight classes and each weight class has its own championships. These championships will be under our spotlight today as we will be taking a look at the best UFC Women champions across these four weight classes.
#4 Flyweight: Valentina Shevchenko
The Flyweight division is the youngest Women’s weight class in the UFC. The inaugural UFC Women’s Flyweight championship was won by Nicco Montano at the Ultimate Fighter: A New World Champion on December 1, 2017.
Montano defeated Roxanne Modafferi to win the championship but her reign was a forgettable one. She was stripped of the title on September 2018 after she failed to defend it on multiple occasions due to one reason or the other.
To crown a new champion, UFC decided to book a super fight between former UFC Women’s Strawweight champion Joanna Jędrzejczyk and Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 231. Shevchenko emerged victoriously and was crowned the second Flyweight champion.
Now, the reason why Shevchenko features in this list instead of Montano is due to two reasons. Firstly, she defeated a decorated name in Joanna Jędrzejczyk to win the Flyweight title.
Secondly, Shevchenko has a better resume when compared to Montano. Shevchenko holds a professional record of 16-3 to his name with her only losses coming against Amanda Nunes and Liz Carmouche.
It would be interesting to see what the future holds for Shevchenko as the Flyweight champion. But, for the time being, it’s safe to say that Shevchenko is better when compared to Montano.
#3 Featherweight: Cris Cyborg
Just like the Flyweight division, the Women’s Featherweight division is also quite young. The inaugural champion of the division was Germaine de Randamie. She defeated Holly Holm at UFC 208 to win the title but three months later, she was stripped of the championship after refusing to defend against Cris Cyborg.
UFC then booked Cris Cyborg vs. Tonya Evinger at UFC 214 to crown the new champion and Cyborg came out on top. This kick-started the dominant run of Cyborg.
She defeated former UFC Bantamweight champion Holly Holm in her first title defence and then went on to secure a win against former Invicta Bantamweight champion Yana Kunitskaya in her second defence.
With a record of 20-1 and an unbeaten run of 20 fights across 14 years, Cyborg is showing no signs of slowing down as well.
#2 Strawweight: Joanna Jędrzejczyk
The UFC Strawweight division got its first champion in December 2014 after Carla Esparza defeated Rose Namajunas at The Ultimate Fighter: A Champion Will Be Crowned Finale.
Esparza, however, could not hold on to the championship as she dropped it to Joanna Jędrzejczyk on her first defence at UFC 185.
Joanna’s dominant run in the division as the champion started with this win over Esparza after which she held the title for around 966 days. Over the course of this period, Joanna got the better of names likes Jessica Penne, Valérie Létourneau, Cláudia Gadelha, Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Jéssica Andrade.
After a whopping five successful defences, Joanna’s streak came to an end at the hands of Rose Namajunas at UFC 217.
Although she did get an immediate rematch to capture the gold, she failed to do so. But this doesn’t take anything away from the fact that she was the best UFC Women’s Strawweight champion.
#1 Bantamweight: Ronda Rousey
It was Ronda Rousey that started the Women’s revolution in the UFC. She was the first women fighter to be crowned a UFC champion and though her fighting skills are questioned these days, Rousey went on to defend the Bantamweight championship on six separate occasions.
Her first win came against Liz Carmouche at UFC 157 which was also the first Women’s fight in the UFC as mentioned in the first slide. After this, Rousey defeated Miesha Tate (UFC 168), Sara McMann (UFC 170), Alexis Davis (UFC 175), Cat Zingano (UFC 184), and Bethe Correia (UFC 190).
This streak of victories made her one of the biggest stars in the sport and she soon started attracting mainstream attention as well.
While Rousey had a great career outside the octagon, her fighting career came crashing down when she was defeated by Holly Holm at UFC 193.
After the defeat against Holm, Rousey only fought once in the UFC and it was also a forgettable affair as she was defeated by Amanda Nunes. Rousey soon moved to the WWE and though she did not end her UFC run gracefully, she is still one of the best champions in the UFC history.
Do you agree with the list? Let us know in the comments below.
