Sherdog’s Top 10: Greatest Combat Athletes

5. Ronda Rousey

“Rowdy” finishes in fifth place for a second time on a Sherdog list, equaling her placing on the list of greatest grapplers ever as well as being fourth on our list of the greatest female fighters ever pound-for-pound. Not surprisingly, she also finishes right next to Kayla Harrison, who has been compared to her frequently. In fact, Rousey finished just one point ahead of Harrison in this poll—personally, I had Harrison just ahead of Rousey on my list. We've discussed Rousey's MMA career before, which was far superior to Harrison's; Rousey was considered the greatest ever in her prime and utterly unbeatable, decimating all in her path, including many quality foes like Julia Budd, Liz Carmouche, Miesha Tate twice, Cat Zingano, Sarah Kaufman and Sara McMann. In judo, however, it was the other way around. Rousey was excellent, but nowhere near Harrison's level. A world junior champion and three-time Pan American Games champion, Rousey never quite achieved gold at the two biggest competitions. She won a silver medal at the 2007 World championships at 70 kilograms, followed by bronze at the 2008 Olympics. Perhaps she would have eventually struck gold had she stuck with judo, but on the other hand, that would have hurt her success in MMA. And one can make a similar argument with Harrison; had she started MMA after her first judo Olympic gold medal, she would have likely had even greater success there. Still, Rousey was an elite judoka and one of the greatest legends in WMMA, another obvious inclusion here.

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