Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Combat Athletes

6. Kayla Harrison

The superb Harrison makes her first Sherdog top 10 list. Judging her MMA career isn't easy. Certainly, she was tremendously dominant and ruthlessly destroyed almost all her opponents. However, due to competing primarily at lightweight, she very rarely faced serious opposition. Most of her opponents were blown-up featherweights or bantamweights that Harrison dwarfed in size and strength, doing whatever she wanted with them. Her two best wins were decisions over Larissa Pacheco in 2019. At the time, Pacheco was still improving, being 24 and 25 years old for those battles, and was fairly small at featherweight, never mind lightweight. When they fought for the third time in November 2022, Pacheco was much more skilled and had grown into the weight class, becoming bigger and stronger. She handed Harrison the first loss of her career, winning three of five rounds on the scorecards. However, there is no doubt about Harrison when it comes to her combat sport of choice before MMA, judo: She is one of the best ever. Winning countless major international tournaments, she was the 78-kilogram world champion in 2010 and then won back-to-back Olympic gold medals in 2012 and 2016 at that weight class. That's an incredibly rare achievement in women's judo for several reasons. Firstly, careers are very short due to the incredible strain on one's wrists and forearms, with some judo greats retiring in their mid-20s. Also, judo fights are often very close and decided by the whims of a judge. I should also mention that women's judo is highly competitive and popular in many countries, more so than women's boxing or kickboxing. For such amazing all-time greatness in judo and a very good MMA career that could still get even better, Harrison is a no-brainer on this list.

Continue Reading » Number 5