Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Japanese Fighters

5. Megumi Fujii

Fuji, who finished seventh on Sherdog's list of the greatest female fighters ever pound-for-pound, finished even higher here. However, there was far less variance in her placing, with a large number of fourth-place votes, my own included. Personally, I compare her to Royce Gracie: Both were amazing pioneers possessing very skilled grappling and little else. Fujii would easily submit opponent after opponent, many of whom had barely any jiu-jitsu to speak of. Thus, she started her career a scintillating 22-0, but whom was she beating, exactly? Her best victories were submissions of Lisa Ellis (twice), a 21-year-old Seo Hee Ham and a 22-year-old Carla Esparza who was just 3-0 at the time. It's not the most impressive set of wins for anyone on this list based on even the names, but having watched those fights, I can tell you that Ham and especially Esparza were mere shadows of what they would later become. Fujii suffered her first loss to Zoila Frausto in 2010, a very close five-round split decision that could have gone either way. On one hand, she was 36 years old, clearly past her prime, and it was hardly a decisive defeat. On the other hand, that loss coincided with a significant improvement in the quality of WMMA, and that era was still nowhere near as good as the current one. Fujii would win a few more matches and lost two very controversial, foul-plagued decisions to Jessica Aguilar, the first a borderline robbery, before retiring. She is undoubtedly an all-time great and the best of the early pioneers, but I still consider her very far removed from the quality of top WMMA today.

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