MMA pound-for-pound rankings: New No. 1 after Amanda Nunes’ retirement

Amanda Nunes’ retirement following her dominant victory over Irene Aldana on June 10 in the main tournament of UFC 289 left a large gap atop the Yahoo Sports activities females’s pound-for-pound rankings.

There has been no person fancy Nunes in the females’s sport, who no longer handiest was a hit, but maintained her success over a protracted timeframe.

As a reminder, right here is a girl who:

• Modified into as soon as 11-1 in UFC championship fights.
• Knocked out Julia Budd in 14 seconds; Ronda Rousey in forty eight seconds and Cris “Cyborg” Justino in 51 seconds, all faded world champions.
• Modified into as soon as 9-1 against faded UFC champions and was 1-0 against a faded Bellator champion.
• Went 14-1 in her final 15 bouts against by a ways the very best opposition any female mixed martial artist has ever faced. She avenged essentially the most helpful loss.
• Modified into as soon as essentially the most helpful female to retain two main titles concurrently.

No person can certainly replace her, as she’s in a category all her rating amongst female fighters and is handiest matched by Jon Jones, Georges St-Pierre and Khabib Nurmagomedov amongst all fighters, no subject gender.

My three candidates to substitute her at the discontinue of the P4P checklist — someone has to attain it — are No. 2 Julianna Peña, No. 3 Alexa Grasso and No. 4 Valentina Shevchenko.

Shevchenko lost a pair of agonizingly shut choices to Nunes, particularly a title wrestle at UFC 215 in Edmonton, Alberta, on Sept. 9, 2017. Peña is mainly the most helpful girl to defeat Nunes in the final eight-plus years, and she did it by develop. And Grasso, the flyweight champion, did it against Shevchenko by develop.

I eliminated Grasso first on tale of, while the earn over Shevchenko was large, she hasn’t been as a hit for as long. Peña and Shevchenko are both coming off losses, Peña to Nunes and Shevchenko to Grasso, so there are negatives to naming every of them.

My greatest project with striking Peña No. 1 is her relative divulge of being inactive and the reality she’s just 3-3 in her final six fights.

Shevchenko was worthy extra dominant over a protracted timeframe than any diversified female fighter no longer named Nunes, but no longer handiest was she completed by Grasso, she wasn’t her same dominant self prior to the develop. She was winning the wrestle and made a mistake that Grasso took help of, but had she hung on to earn, it may perhaps presumably well beget been a ho-hum victory. And if we’re being faithful, Shevchenko’s earn over Taila Santos on June 12, 2022 wasn’t impressive.

I could presumably well form a case for all three, but felt that Peña having most no longer too long ago crushed Nunes when Nunes was at the discontinue of her sport gave her the threshold. It’s itsy-bitsy and could presumably just even be debated for days, with out ask.

For now, though, Julianna Peña is the No. 1 females’s fighter in the world.

Men’s MMA pound-for-pound rankings as of June 20

1. Jon Jones (27-1), UFC heavyweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 1.
2. Islam Makhachev (24-1), UFC mild-weight champion. Outdated Ranking: 2.
3. Alexander Volkanovski (25-2), UFC featherweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 3.
4. Israel Adesanya (24-2), UFC middleweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 4.
5. Leon Edwards (21-3), UFC welterweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 5.
6. Khamzat Chimaev (12-0) UFC welterweight/middleweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 6.
7. Aljamain Sterling (23-3) UFC bantamweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 7.
8. Kamaru Usman (20-3), faded UFC welterweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 8.
9. Charles Oliveira (33-9), faded UFC mild-weight champion. Outdated Ranking: 9.
10. Henry Cejudo (16-3), UFC bantamweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 10.

Ladies folk’s MMA pound-for-pound rankings as of June 20

1. Julianna Peña (12-5), UFC bantamweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 2
2. Alexa Grasso (16-3), UFC flyweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 3.
3. Valentina Shevchenko (23-4), UFC flyweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 4.
4. Zhang Weili (23-3), UFC strawweight champion. Outdated Ranking: 5.
5. Erin Blanchfield (11-1), UFC flyweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 6.
6. Manon Fiorot (10-1), UFC flyweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 7.
7. Taila Santos (19-2), UFC flyweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 8.
8. Amanda Lemos (13-2-1), UFC strawweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 9.
9. Raquel Pennington (15-8), UFC bantamweight contender. Outdated Ranking: 10.
10. Larissa Pacheco (21-4), 2022 PFL mild-weight champion. Outdated Ranking: NR.