MMA promotions today are significantly more tamed than they use to be in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back in those days MMA had less rules, open weight fights, skill vs skill fights and it was about who truly was the best fighter in the promotion not just within a weight class. It’s unfortunate that the political leftists have ruined Western MMA by making it more difficult to sanction openweight MMA fights nowadays. The only way we can currently watch openweight MMA fights is by watching Rizin or Road FC.
There is one fight from those days that surprisingly isn’t talked about that often and that’s the fight between Megumi Yabushita and Svetlana Goundarenko in 2000. Even now more than two decades later, there hasn’t been a fight that could match the intensity of this fight. What made this fight exceptional was the tremendous size difference between both female combatants. Megumi Yabushita being only 5’2” and 134lbs while Svetlana goundarenko being a whopping 6’3” and 330lbs. Not to mention that both of these female fighters had won fights earlier in the night. This was a test of speed, flexibility, dexterity and endurance vs brute force, weight, reach and intimidation. All while both women were evenly skilled/experienced.
Both women quickly started to grapple with each other, with some strikes. At first it seemed that Megumi was struggling to mount much offense against her gargantuan opponent but at the same time Svetlana was also struggling to get in control of the much smaller Megumi. The smaller of the two was actually doing a very good job of keeping her larger opponent at bay. Every time Svetlana tried to pin Megumi against a corner, Megumi managed to break free. Eventually Megumi managed to pull off an incredible feat by taking her much larger opponent down. As soon as the 330lb Svetlana fell, Megumi wisely mounted her and delivered multiple punches to Svetlana’s body. Svetlana struggled to get up as Megumi managed to maintain control of her larger opponent for a while. One of the highlights of this bout was when Svetlana supplexed Megumi which had no effect on Megumi as she quickly followed up by once again mounting Svetlana. The fight ended with both women on their feet resulting with the much smaller Megumi being declared the winner by decision. Megumi’s victory was most likely attributed to her managing to get in control twice throughout the bout.
Such a great fight that also demonstrated that there are so many other factors aside from size and skill that determine the outcome of a fight. This fight showed that being too big is actually a disadvantage that hampers the bigger person’s endurance, agility, flexibility, speed and dexterity. This fight also showed that a woman doesn’t need to be “butch” to be a badass, as this fight showed a petite feminine woman beating a much larger woman in a fair fight.
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