Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Strikeforce Fighters

5. Ronda Rousey

Rousey, who finished fourth on Sherdog's list of the 10 greatest female fighters, finishes only one spot lower here, but that doesn't convey the insane variance in the votes. One respondent had her first; another as low as ninth. Personally, I had her seventh. She had a mere four fights in the promotion, but each one featured a significant opponent that she ruthlessly smashed apart, and was an important step in making her the biggest WMMA draw of all time, with no one else even coming close. Fame and popularity aside, she was a unique fighter with a one-of-a-kind career. Rousey possessed a level of physical strength and athleticism WMMA has never seen before or since and combined it with world-class judo, making her one of its very best grapplers ever. Her striking was sorely lacking, and as we later found out, she was incredibly mentally weak. However, for a long time, it didn't remotely matter. In fact, based off physical strength, athleticism, and aggression alone, she clobbered every opponent she faced, including four in Strikeforce. First, she needed all of 25 seconds to armbar Sarah D'Alelio, not a famous name nowadays, but someone who would go on to dominate Amanda Nunes for 15 straight minutes a year and a half after her loss to Rousey. Then, Rousey took 39 seconds to armbar Julia Budd, who would go on to become an all-time great featherweight champion and was 10th on my list of the best female fighters pound-for-pound. Next, she armbarred Miesha Tate, easily one of the five best female fighters in the sport at the time, in 4 minutes and 27 seconds, which was downright slow by her standards, to capture the Strikeforce women's bantamweight crown. And lastly, she had yet another sub-minute win when she armbarred Sarah Kaufman, another top fighter of the era, in 54 seconds. Her incredible success and popularity in Strikeforce would cause Dana White to go back on his word of never having women fight in the UFC, with Rousey being part of that historical match as the headliner for UFC 157. It's hard to know exactly how to rank her time in Strikeforce, though. She was certainly an important phenom who brutalized the best competition available then. On the flipside, it was only 4 total fights, and the level of WMMA at the time, even among Budd, Tate, and Kaufman, is nowhere near what it is now, over a decade later.

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