Amanda Nunes is the baddest woman on planet Earth, Holly Holm will probably be the first women’s featherweight titleholder in UFC history, and Ronda Rousey is done. Probably.
That is to say nothing of Valentina Shevchenko’s continued improvement, Julianna Pena hitting her first road bump in the form of Shevchenko’s previously unheralded submission skills, and Miesha Tate’s retirement.
Oh yeah, and Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino, the undisputed best featherweight in the world, is lurking after a failed USADA drug test.
Suffice it to say, the top two weight divisions for women in the UFC are in total flux. They are also, for the foreseeable future at least, inexorably linked.
That is because the UFC took failed or stuttering 135 pounders and recycled them to create the new 145-pound division. At UFC 208 on Saturday night, former bantamweight champion Holm will take on Dutch kickboxing queen Germaine de Randamie for the inaugural featherweight championship. Both women are extremely accomplished fighters outside the Octagon, but Holm has lost her past two fights since beating Rousey while De Randamie is a middling 6-3 in her MMA career.
This was not what the UFC wanted for its big event in Brooklyn or for the featherweight division. If everything had gone according to plan, Holm would be fighting “Cyborg,” as UFC president Dana White said in December.
Justino, however, turned down the two title shots — against either Holm or De Randamie — and then news of a failed USADA drug test filtered out. “Cyborg” had been caught using a diuretic, according to MMAFighting.com, which helps fighters cut water weight, but is sometimes used to mask more serious performances enhancing drugs. While there is nothing connecting Justino’s current predicament with traditional PEDs, she did test positive for anabolic steroids in 2011.
Justino’s drug purgatory has completely deflated any excitement for UFC 208 just like Jon Jones’ failed test almost ruined UFC 200. Holm vs. De Randamie is clearly a second-class fight, which is no longer good enough for fans. They don’t want to watch circus acts like Brock Lesnar, they want to watch true mixed martial artists who are entertainers in the cage and on the mic like Conor McGregor or Rousey in her prime.
Unfortunately for the bantamweight and featherweight divisions, the “next McGregor” or “next Rousey” is nowhere in sight. What’s worse, both divisions are in the midst of a generational transition as the pioneers of the sport (Rousey, Tate, Holm) are being fazed out for the current crop of fighters (Nunes, Shevchenko, Pena) who are entering their primes but haven’t become stars yet.
Past experience suggests that the UFC will get through this storyline-devoid period. The organization’s biggest strength is its ability to create new stars. The question now is whether the UFC and its new owner, WME-IMG, can pull off the same trick with women’s MMA as they have so often in the past with men.
If they are going to do it, here are the women at the top of the bantamweight and featherweight divisions who will be the face of the sport moving forward.
The reigning bantamweight champion is on a five-fight win streak, is getting ever closer to being the best pound-for-pound female fighter in the world (that title currently belongs to 13-0, 115-pound strawweight champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk), and has destroyed a who’s who of top female fighters in her weight class. She probably ended Rousey’s fighting career, started Tate on the road to retirement, and beat current No. 1 contender and her probable next opponent, Shevchenko, in extremely impressive fashion.
The thing that really makes Nunes stand out, however, is not her resume, it is her evolution into a complete mixed martial artist. Nunes started out in Brazil as an ultra-aggressive brute of a fighter who bulldozed her opponents with pure athleticism in the opening moments of her fights. Those simple tactics stopped working as the level of her competition improved, but instead of wilting, Nunes adapted. Now, as she showed in those recent triumphs, Nunes controls her natural aggressiveness and uses her Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt as a threat which bolsters her takedown defense. The result is that her fights now tend to stay upright where her physicality, footwork, and head movement combine to devastating effect. Add in precision-guided punches and you’ve got a complete MMA fighter who is clearly the best bantamweight in the world.
If Nunes is the all-conquering queen, then Shevchenko is the ever-improving challenger who could one day take her throne. Quiet, stoic, and hard, the Kyrgyzstan-born fighter is a walking Soviet Union-era cliche, a first impression that isn’t helped by the fact that she doesn’t speak fluent English. Like Nunes, the language barrier is a problem with selling her fights, but Shevchenko’s work inside the cage has reached such a high level that the UFC is going to have to figure out a way to make her into a star even though she doesn’t bring McGregor-style mic-skills to the table.
A 17-Time World Muay Thai and K1 Champion, Shevchenko is a cerebral strike-first fighter with sneaky good grappling and submission skills. Her full repertoire of moves was on full display in her last fight against wrestler Pena. “The Venezuelan Vixen” was thought to be the better ground fighter heading into the match and appeared to have the upper hand throughout as she got on the inside and pressed Shevchenko against the cage. But Shevchenko was prepared for Pena’s gameplan, countered her inside knees with brilliantly timed Muay Thai trips and ended up getting an armbar finish off her back.
The question now is if Shevchenko has improved enough to avenge her loss to Nunes.
Holm has the most mainstream name recognition of any female fighter currently plying their trade in the UFC. She also has the most storied pre-MMA career of any female fight (she’s the most highly decorated female boxer of all time).
Since she showed the world that Rousey has a glass chin via a head kick that will live forever, Holm’s career has stuttered to the point that she’s fighting at UFC 208 for more than a title. She’s fighting to make sure she’s not Buster Douglas. That, at least, is the dominant storyline heading into the fight.
A wider-angle picture tells a very different story. Yes, Holm has lost her last two fights but she dominated her championship fight against Tate for 21 minutes straight before losing via a rear-naked choke that was one part skill, one part luck, and was totally miraculous. Holm’s loss to Shevchenko can’t be shrugged off as easily, but at the time few knew exactly how good Shevchenko was and they were fighting at a weight (135 pounds) that was hard for Holm to make. Now that she’s moved up to the new 145-pound division there is nothing to suggest that Holm won’t find the dominant form which led to a 10-0 record and victory over Rousey.
Pena is clearly the weak link in the trifecta of top fighters atop the bantamweight division which was laid bare when she to Shevchenko at her own game.
Losing the biggest fight of your career from a dominant position is undeniably a major setback, yet there is still reason for optimism. Pena is young (27), she has improved with every fight, and she has clearly recovered from the serious knee injury she suffered in training after winning the “Ultimate Fighter.” Blowing up your ACL, MCL, LCL, meniscus and hamstring has derailed many a fighter’s career — just ask Dominick Cruz — yet Pena recovered quickly, won her first three fights upon returning to the Octagon, and there is no shame in losing to Shevchenko.
If Pena can keep improving, and keep beating top 10 opponents, there is no reason to believe that she won’t get a title shot in late 2017 once Nunes and Shevchenko duke it out.
“Cyborg” is the best female on this list. Period. She is 17-1-1 with one no contest and hasn’t lost since her debut fight in 2005. She’s a beast athletically, hits harder than any woman in the world, and is so strong she can literally drag women off the mat in order to stand them up and destroy them with her strikes.
Justino’s skill and dominance are undeniable. But so are her PED-tainted past and weight. “Cyborg” is just plain huge. She walks around at well over 170 pounds and has such a hard time cutting weight that she “almost died” getting down to 140 for her catchweight bout with Lina Lansberg. Justino blamed everyone but herself for her weight problems, including a UFC-approved nutritionist’s shoddy advice, and has been vocal in advocating for the creation of the featherweight division, yet the specter of PEDs and her sheer physical size cast a shadow over her career that is hard to pierce.
If the latest USADA test is upheld, Justino is facing a one-year suspension but the hit to her reputation could be much worse. It is one thing for a former champion like Jones to fail a drug test for allegedly taking “tainted d–k pills,” it is something else entirely for a hulking potential champ to get dinged for drugs twice.
Longtime rivals Rousey and Tate have both lost their last two fights and are both retired. Tate, officially, and Rousey in all probability. Except that they are extremely young for fighters (they are both 30) and if there is any universal truth that extends to all fighters is that they never give in to father time.
That being said, Tate seems content in retirement and has landed a coveted analyst job with Fox Sports while Rousey’s film career is dormant but not dead.
But really, would anyone be surprised if they came out of retirement in a couple of years?
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