Women’s Ratings Update: Estrada grabs inaugural strawweight Ring belt, moves up at P4P
Another superb week of action in the realm of women’s boxing has made yet another historic, trailblazing Ring belt to occupy its place in boxing history.
In a dominant performance against a solid unbeaten champion, Seniesa Estrada grabbed the very first strawweight Ring belt ever awarded, adding it to her growing collection of achievements in a career that rolls on with the strength of a pocket-sized hurricane.
“At this point Seniesa Estrada is unstoppable,” said Beautiful Brawler’s Lupi Gutierrez-Beagle, with Argentine author and TV producer Yesica Palmetta adding that “(Estrada) made a great technical demonstration of her skills against a respectable rival like Rupprecht.”
Author and historian Malissa Smith added that “Estrada continues to show her dominance in the sport and her willingness to put it all on the line,” while columnist Mark Jones pointed out that “Estrada proved that there’s a significant distance between her and the second-best strawweight fighter in the world. Rupprecht was a competent champion and comfortably defeated Yokasta Valle, the current WBO and IBF world champion, four years ago.”
With the win, Estrada becomes the new champion and also moves up one spot in the pound-for-pound list, overtaking Jessica McCaskill at the No. 5 spot.
“Estrada is demonstrating dominance and a skill set that far exceeds Jessica McCaskill at this point and as such deserves to move up to the 5th spot behind Chantelle Cameron,” argued Smith in her proposal, which received an overwhelming positive vote from the panel.
Estrada’s win meant that most of the top 5 moved up one spot to fill in the vacancies, with Yokasta Valle defending her two belts and now becoming the new No. 1 after a terrific win over Jessica Basulto in Costa Rica on the very same day in which Estrada defended her half of the alphabet-soup belt collection.
Rupprecht held on to her position as well, improving to No. 2 by default, and the new vacancy at the bottom of the list was awarded to Mexico’s Basulto, who gave a great account of herself against Valle.
Diego M. Morilla writes for The Ring since 2013. He has also written for HBO.com, ESPN.com and many other magazines, websites, newspapers and outlets since 1993. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He has won two first-place awards in the BWAA’s annual writing contest, and he is the moderator of The Ring’s Women’s Ratings Panel. He served as copy editor for the second era of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.
