Now That the UFC Has Had Five Women’s Strawweight Champions, It’s Time to Figure Out Just Who Was the Best of Them All…
The strawweight division is definitely the most balanced and competitive women’s division in the UFC today. No other weight class currently has the same depth as 115lbs. Amanda Nunes and Valentina Shevchenko might be two of the most dominant and elite champions out there, but they definitely face a deficit of quality opponents.
You can’t say that about strawweight. The turnover since Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s title loss to Rose Namajunas shows that any one of these women can beat each other on any given day. Now Weili Zhang is the champion, but she’s going to have to deal with the threat of Michelle Waterson, the former champ Jedrzejczyk, Namajunas, and Tatiana Suarez.
So now that we’ve had five strawweight champs, let’s try and rank them based on their spells with the UFC and the talent and circumstances of their victory. Check out the list below and see if you agree!
5. Jessica Andrade
A rare physical specimen, Jessica Andrade is down the bottom of this list because she’s technically the weakest of the UFC’s strawweight champions so far. She lost her first shot at the title against Joanna Jedrzejczyk, but there’s no shame in that at all. She bludgeoned her way to another title shot, with a frightening KO win over Karolina Kowalkiewicz.
In her title fight against Rose Namajunas, she was getting pieced up. That was until Namajunas made the fatal mistake of going for a flying armbar. She got smashed on her head by the beefy champ, making Andrade the unlikely champion. Power will only get you so far though, as she found out to her cost against Weili Zhang.
