While the world of female MMA has a smaller roster, it is still full of impressive fighters who have a staggering amount of KO and TKO wins. That’s what we’re looking at today by comparing the career KO records of five of the best female fighters around right now.
Somebody’s ability to score a knockout doesn’t necessarily make them the best fighter (submissions still exist) but it does mean they can handle themselves in a fistfight and put on a show while doing it.
All of the women we have covered are still fighting, too. This means their records may have changed at later dates, though most of them don’t have any more fights scheduled for 2021. It also means you can still get in on the action if you’re part of the betting crowd, by using resources like Fanduel’s MMA sportsbook
1. Cris Cyborg
Having left the UFC for Bellator last year, Cris Cyborg has an impressive career record of 25 wins and 2 losses, along with a no-contest bout due to doping concerns. What’s even more impressive is that 20 of those 25 wins were either KOs or TKOs, making her the best striker in female MMA.
Along with this impressive record, Cyborg has collected featherweight championship titles throughout her career. After beating Gina Carano for the inaugural Strikeforce Women’s Featherweight Championship, Cyborg’s defense run was cut short by that scandal we mentioned.
From there, she became Invicta FC Featherweight Champion before winning the vacant UFC Women’s Featherweight Championship in 2017, at UFC 214. A year later, she lost that to Amanda Nunes, who we’ll be seeing more of below. Now, she’s the Bellator Women’s Featherweight World Champion, having beaten Sinead Kavanagh to defend it on November 12th, 2021.
2. Amanda Nunes
Amanda Nunes is often called the greatest women’s MMA fighter of all time, so it makes sense that she’d be somewhere on this list. Having fought in 25 fights, she won 21 and lost 4. Of those 21 wins, she won by knockout 13 times. Not only that, she hasn’t lost any of her 12 match-ups since 2015.
Most of Nunes’ acclaim comes from her being the first women’s two-division UFC champion. This made her the third UFC fighter to hold titles across two weight classes at the same time, behind such figures as Conor McGregor and Daniel Cormier.
Like many of the fighters here, Nunes is still active and will go on to get more KO wins. The last time she fought was in March of 2021 because subsequent match-ups fell through, though she is returning to the Octagon at UFC 269: Oliveira vs. Poirier.
3. Zhang Weili
Competing in the UFC’s strawweight division, where she was recently the UFC Women’s Strawweight Champion before losing the title, Zhang Weili has a long winning streak that was only recently broken. She has fought 24 fights, 21 being wins and 3 being losses. Of those 21 wins, 10 were by KO.
That’s impressive enough but her losses were also at her debut and then her last two fights in 2021. That means from 2014 to 2020, she went undefeated against 21 challengers. Those two recent losses came at the hands (or more precisely feet) of Rose Namajunas, who took the strawweight title from Weili. Naturally, she wants it back.
4. Jessica Andrade
Here’s another former UFC Women’s Strawweight Champion, though she’s more active in the flyweight division nowadays. With a career win/loss record of 22 wins and 9 losses, Jessica Andrade has won by knockout 9 times.
After losing to Zhang Weili for the strawweight championship in 2019, Andrade is now battling against Valentina Shevchenko for the UFC Women’s Flyweight Championship instead. She lost in April of 2021 but will no doubt try again, maybe lining up a few more knockouts along the way.
5. Valentina Shevchenko
That brings us to our fifth most effective fist-fighter in women’s MMA, Valentina Shevchenko. Throughout Shevchenko’s career, she has fought 25 matches and won 22 of them. 8 of them were won by knockout while she’s at 7 and 7 for submission and decision victories too, making her a formidable, well-rounded fighter.
That’s probably why she’s dominating the UFC Women’s Flyweight Championship at the moment, having defended it 6 times as of September 2021, including against Jessica Andrade as we covered above. Two of her three career losses were against Amanda Nunes too, proving that it takes another great fighter to contend with Shevchenko.