4 Best UFC Women's Champions across Weight Classes
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.