Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Pound-for-Pound Women

5. Joanna Jedrzejczyk

After Ronda Rousey's shocking defeat by Holly Holm, the UFC praised its strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk as the greatest female fighter ever. She finishes her career coming in 5th on this list. Jedrzejczyk began her career a stellar 14-0, including winning the UFC strawweight championship and defending it an impressive five times. She had a unique style, being exceptionally tall and long for the weight class and picking opponents apart with her striking and the greatest cardio in WMMA history. While she wasn't much of an offensive grappler, she had superb takedown defense and was even better at getting back up. Her triumphs include one-sided decisions over Julianna Lima, Karolina Kowalkiewicz, Jessica Penne and most impressively, Jessica Andrade, in addition to stopping Carla Esparza in the second to capture the crown in the first place. To be fair, her rivalry and two fights with Claudia Gadelha aren't so clear-cut. Joanna won the first fight against Gadelha by split decision, but most people, myself included, scored it for the Brazilian. The champion left no doubt in their rematch. After Gadelha clearly took the first two stanzas with her takedowns and ground-and-pound, Jedrzejczyk proceeded to dominate the last three rounds with her striking, at least one of which was a definite 10-8.

It would shock anyone back then to be told that after the 14-0 start and being anointed the GOAT, Jedrzejczyk would finish her career 2-5. She was stopped in the first round by a vastly improved Rose Namajunas, with Jedrzejczyk tapping to strikes. Namajunas proved it was no fluke either, taking a deserved five-round decision in their rematch, no matter how much Jedrzejczyk protested it. Jedrzejczyk did score decisions over solid contenders in Tecia Torres and Michelle Waterson, but her further challenges to win championship gold were in vain. She was dominated by Valentina Shevchenko in her lone fight at 125 pounds and was then out-pointed in a split decision by Weili Zhang in one of the greatest fights ever. Watching the fight live, I agreed with the decision. There was a lot of hype for their rematch, but it ended far more abruptly, with Zhang winning by a beautiful spinning backfist KO in Round 2, sending the Polish legend into retirement. Still, it had been a fantastic career, even if it didn't match its potential promise of being the greatest ever. Blame that on the continued evolution and improvement of women's strawweight.

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