6. Amanda Nunes
Nunes was a polarizing inclusion due to the difficulty of factoring WMMA into pound-for-pound heavy hitters. One respondent had her first, while more than half left her off entirely. Personally, I had her sixth, which was right where she ended up. Nunes is the heaviest hitter in WMMA history, Cristiane Justino included, and in my view it's not close. Nunes has true knockout power in both fists. I've mentioned how rare that is in MMA overall, but among women, Nunes is the only one for whom I can write this. Both her right cross and left hook are deadly, and it's not just her fists. She has powerful knees that she used to shellack the very tough Raquel Pennington, and excellent kicks, including a lovely head kick that she knocked out Holly Holm with, and a leg kick that finished Shayna Baszler early in the opening stanza. Among other memorable knockouts, Nunes sports a 14-second demolition of future all-time great Julia Budd, a 48-second smashing of a beleaguered Ronda Rousey, and of course, her superlative 51 second demolition of “Cyborg” to become WMMA's first and only champ-champ. Nunes also often hurts opponents with strikes before finishing them with submissions, such as her clinical, one-sided club-and-sub of Miesha Tate to win the bantamweight crown for the first time or her retiring of Megan Anderson in defending her featherweight crown. Without question, Nunes has set an amazing standard in WMMA, and perhaps in no area more than the raw power of her strikes.
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