So, yeah, I ranked Womens Bantamweight. For those of you who have stumbled upon this blog by drunken happenstance, Women’s MMA somehow became my expertise. Because God is ironic. While this isn’t a profiling or a a match preview or anything else that might give insight into these women and who are they as people, ranking people’s value as a human being is the next best thing, and not many people do Top 25s for any female division, so here we go.
For ranking criteria, women are categorized as Bantamweights if their next scheduled fight was at Bantamweight or, if they don’t have one, their last fight was at Bantamweight. Fighters also must have been active within the last 15 months, or have a fight scheduled in the next 3. I included The Ultimate Fighter 18 contestants since it’s now been made public who made it to the elimination round and it seems they all made weight.
1) Ronda Rousey
(7-0) (UFC)
2) Cat Zingano (8-0) (UFC)
Recovering from surgery with drinking buddy Carla Esparza
3) Sara McMann (7-0) (UFC)
4) Liz Carmouche (9-3) (UFC)
5) Sarah Kaufman
(16-2) (UFC)
6) Miesha Tate (13-4) (UFC)
7) Alexis Davis (14-5) (UFC)
8) Shayna Bazler (15-8) (TUF contestant)
9) Lauren Taylor (7-0) (Invicta)
10) Sarah D’Alelio (7-4) (Invicta)
11) Amanda Nunes
(8-3) (UFC)
12) Rosi Sexton
(13-3) (UFC)
13) Germaine de Randamie
(4-2) (UFC)
14) Jessica Andrade (9-3) (UFC)
15) Holly Holm (4-0) (Legacy FC)
Pictured point-sparring with Jon Jones
16) Miriam Nakamoto (2-0, 1 NC) (Invicta)
17) Julie Kedzie (16-12) (UFC)
18) Jessamyn Duke (2-0, 1 NC) (TUF contestant)
19) Tara Larosa (21-3) (TUF contestant)
20) Hitomi Akano
(18-10) (Invicta/semi-retired)
21) Sheila Gaff
(10-6-1) (free agent)
22) Rin Nakai (14-0-1) (Pancrase/Japanese talent agency slave)
23) Raquel Pennington (3-3) (TUF contestant)
24) Tonya Evinger (11-6) (TUF contestant)
25) Kaitlyn Young (7-8-1) (Invicta)
Honorable Mentions:
-Bethe Correia (6-0) (free agent)
-Valerie Letourneau (4-3) (TUF contestant)
-Brenda Gonzales (4-1) (free agent)
-Peggy Morgan (2-0) (TUF contestant)
-Sarah Moras (3-1) (TUF contestant)
Punch Sport Pagoda 