Ben
Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration
Every year, the sport of mixed martial arts gives us a handful of fighters who appear from out of nowhere, breaking through to new competitive heights and fame. Whether it is a well-traveled veteran who manages a shocking mid-career reinvention, such as 2019 winner Jorge Masvidal, or a fighter who shows up at the right place, right time and in the right competitive groove to become a star during one of MMA’s most difficult years, as Kevin Holland did in COVID-stricken 2020, those breakthroughs are a reminder of the wonderful unpredictability of mixed martial arts, a challenge to our assumptions as fans and an inspiration to the next year’s crop of would-be superstars.
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Still, when it comes to breaking through as an MMA fighter in every sense of the phrase, there was one clear choice and one runaway winner. When 2024 dawned, Dakota Ditcheva was an obvious candidate to be part of the year-end discussion for this award. She had just battered Valentina Scatizzi in the PFL Europe 2023 Championship to win the PFL Europe flyweight title and the promotion had announced that the “Dangerous” kickboxer would be participating in the global season this year. The then 25-year-old Manchester native was 10-0 with nine finishes against credible competition—especially relative to her own experience level—and a penchant for body shot KOs. Factor in her magazine model looks and the kind of effortless charisma that let her pivot smoothly from million-watt charm to humorous trash talk, and it was no surprise that the PFL was poised to push Ditcheva as its new poster girl of the post-Kayla Harrison era.
Being anointed the next big thing is one matter; delivering on that promise is entirely another, and MMA history is littered with the wreckage of fighters who were supposed to be the future of the sport, only to crash and burn. Ditcheva did not merely avoid that pitfall but exceeded expectations. Under the brightest lights of her career to date, she performed better than ever, winning all four of her fights inside of two rounds on her way to claiming a PFL world title and $1 million payday. Sticking with what brought her to the dance, Ditcheva finished each of her opponents with a body shot. Like Rickson Gracie’s legendary armbar or a 1970s Big 10 football team running between the tackles, everyone knew what was coming and nobody could stop it.
What makes Ditcheva’s year even more impressive is that the caliber of her opponents kept rising, but Ditcheva continued to obliterate them as if it wasn’t. Her first two victims of the year, Lisa Mauldin and Chelsea Hackett, were comparable to the women she had been dispatching in 2023, but Jena Bishop, who faced Ditcheva in the playoff semifinals, was a clear step up. Moreover, as a burly grappler from an outstanding camp in Alliance MMA, Bishop was the exact kind of stylistic foil that a rising striking star such as Ditcheva needs to face in order to silence the doubters. After Ditcheva wrecked Bishop in under four minutes with a front kick up the middle, any remaining doubters were growing quiet indeed.
That set the stage for Ditcheva’s grand finale. In the 2024 Season PFL Championships on Nov. 29, she toed the line against Taila Santos. The 31-year-old Brazilian was a consensus Top 10 fighter in the division—at the very least—and was barely two years removed from having taken one of the best pound-for-pound women in the world, Valentina Shevchenko, to the wire in an unsuccessful UFC title shot. Santos had rewarded the PFL’s choice to sign her by winning her way to the final with defeats of Ilara Joanne, Bishop and Bellator MMA flyweight champ Liz Carmouche. Even more so than Bishop, Santos represented the kind of litmus test that would certify Ditcheva a contender or a pretender: She was well-rounded, far more experienced and was the first opponent who could even rival Ditcheva’s size and athleticism.
Or so it seemed on paper. Once the cage door closed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia that night, Santos was as overmatched and overwhelmed as any of Ditcheva’s other foes. Ditcheva’s speed and accuracy on the feet left Santos stumbling and swinging at air, and only Santos’ native toughness and wealth of high-level experience kept her from being the Brit’s fifth straight victim not to make it to the second round. The finish was not long in coming, however, and when Ditcheva melted Santos against the cage late Round 2 with a flurry of body punches from both hands, the stoppage felt like an act of mercy. As Ditcheva celebrated in the cage, receiving her belt and ceremonial check in the company of her mom—herself a former high-level kickboxer—it looked very much like the birth of a new global MMA star.
What comes next for the “Dangerous” one is an open question. Whether she enters the 2025 PFL season to try and repeat as champ, tests the waters of the post-Bellator “Champions Series” against someone like Carmouche, or the promotion finds some other competitive outlet for its new face, what is certain is that Dakota Ditcheva is Sherdog’s Breakthrough Fighter of the Year for 2024.
