Legends Of Women’s MMA
Despite it’s relevant infancy in comparison to it’s male counterpart, women’s MMA has given us an impressive handful of oustanding talents in the few short years since Ronda Rousey broke down the doors to the UFC back in 2013. Although Rousey’s candle (to steal a line from the great Elton John) burned out long before her legend did, the resumes of her successors at the apex of the sport have also been extremely impressive.
Amanda Nunes hammered the final nail into the coffin of Rousey’s MMA career to successfully defend her UFC bantamweight title before going on to clean out two divisions and her name sits alongside those of “Rowdy”, Cris Cyborg and Valentina Shevchenko as one of the greatest to ever set foot inside the Octagon. With “The Lioness” having drifted off into retirement and both Cyborg and Shevchenko seemingly in the twilight of their careers, there is an opening for a new dominant champion to become the face of women’s mixed martial arts over the next few years.
Dakota Ditcheva has the skillset, the aura and the ambition to follow in the footsteps of the most illustrious female champions we have seen in the sport so far. “Dangerous” steps into the smartcage to fight for the PFL world championship (and the $1 million prize it carries) this Friday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and the 26-year-old flyweight has looked nothing short of sensational throughout her professional career to date.
Born For This
Ditcheva (13-0) comes from impressive stock. Her mother, Lisa Howarth, was a world champion in kickboxing, full contact karate and Muay Thai, and Dakota was born directly into the world of combat sports. Howarth owned her own gym, and a young Dakota found herself playing with dolls by the side of the mats while her mother was teaching her students.
Although Ditcheva grew up around the gym, she waited until she was 12 years old before properly beginning her martial arts journey. Under her mother’s watchful eye, she won the IFMA World Muay Thai Championships four years in a row, and when she began to hoover up national, international and European titles it became clear that something special was brewing.
Ditcheva transitioned into mixed martial arts in her early twenties and having gone unbeaten throughout her amateur career, made the jump to the professional ranks in 2021. After winning her first five fights she was snapped up by the PFL. Her impressive form continued, culminating with her winning the PFL European tournament (and the $100,000 check) in December 2023.
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Having finished all five opponents the promotion had placed in front of her throughout 2022-2023, it was clear Ditcheva was more than ready for a step up in competition. That came in April of this year when she was entered into the PFL’s global flyweight tournament, and successive devasting finishes over Lisa Mauldin, Chelsea Hackett and Jena Bishop have handed her the opportunity to square off against Taila Santos in this Friday’s ‘winner-takes-all’ encounter.
Santos (22-3) represents Ditcheva’s toughest test to date. Should Ditcheva get the better of the UFC veteranin Saudi Arabia this week, it’s difficult to see anybody else on the PFL roster who might stand in her way going forward. With youth on her side and the kind of killer insinct we have only seen in the eyes of Rousey, Nunes and Cyborg in women’s MMA to date, Ditcheva has the potential to go on and rule the sport for many years to come, but she is very aware that should that happen, it will be partly due to the barriers that have been broken down by some of those great champions before her.
““I was a big Ronda Rousey fan back when I first started fighting,” Ditcheva told me when I interviewed her for Fighters Only earlier this year. “I always have been. She’s got that relationship with her mum, just like me, and she had that other side to her, too. She looked pretty sometimes. She wasn’t afraid to dress up and embrace her femininity, and that’s something that I looked up to. I’m a completely different person when I’m outside the cage, and I think that was really important that I had someone like that to look up to and see that it’s ok to show both sides of your persona. I can wear my hair down and dress nice outside of the cage and I can put on gloves and do my job when I’m supposed to. I think that’s probably why I took to her so much, she definitely inspired me.
“And obviously, there’s Joanna Jedrzejczyk. She did the same Muay Thai tournaments as me when she was younger. Watching her and Valentina Shevchenko coming from Thai boxing and transitioning over to MMA and seeing how well they’ve altered their fighting style to suit MMA inspired me so much. There’s been so many female fighters over the years that I’ve looked up to, and I think that it’s my job now as the ‘next generation’ to keep doing that and inspire young girls the same way because I know how much of an impact it made on my life so that’s what I want to carry on doing.”
