Historic IBF Rankings update by Benjamin Watt

Since their first World Women’s champion in 2010 when Daniella Smith won the first IBF World title, the IBF has had a Women’s rankings from April 2011. However, not all divisions in the women’s rankings were recognised throughout the years.

Photo credit:  Daniella  Smith/History-First IBF Female Boxer holder

Today the IBF has released their rankings, and for the first time since November 2015, not only do we have heavyweight women’s rankings in the IBF, but all women’s weight divisions are recognised.

In December 2015, the IBF only ranked women boxers between the Super Welterweight to Minimumweight. The Middleweights to Heavyweight divisions dropped off for unknown reasons. Maybe due to the less amount of active fighters in those divisions. Eventually, both Super Middleweight and Middleweight divisions were reintroduced into the IBF women’s ranking in May 2017 however still without a Heavyweight division.

May 2017 was around the time of the rise of Christina Hammer when she won both WBC and WBO World Middleweight titles. However, we won’t see a Middleweight champion till June 2018 with Claressa Shields winning against the current WBA and WBC Heavyweight champion Hanna Gabriels. Shields was also the first IBF Super Middleweight title when she won it in August 2017 against Nikki Adler.

In November 2015, we saw the last Heavyweight IBF ranking with Sonya Lamonakis in 1st, Carlette Ewell in 2nd and the WBC World champion at the time Martha Salazar. Australian Olympian Lisa-Marie Vizaniari and former world title contender Tanzee Daniel have also been ranked in the past in 2014.

Today the IBF Heavyweight ranking was introduced because of the scheduled world heavyweight title fight between Lani Daniels and Alrie Meleisea which will happen on May 27th in Auckland New Zealand. The current ranking for the IBF Heavyweight is 1st Lani Daniels, 2nd Alrie Meleisea, 3rd Oxandia Castillo and 4th Razel Mohammed.

Oxandia Castillo ranked 1st in the WBA and 3rd in WBC. They have been fighting since 2010 and are a former WBO Super Welterweight champion when they won the title in 2013. They are certainly well deserving of the IBF rankings. This is the first time ranking for Razel Mohammed is in any of the world rankings. They are currently undefeated with two draws. They are the current South African National Cruiserweight champion and they are well known for calling out Lani Daniels last year. Both women would make interesting matchups for possible future world title contenders.

Across all combat sports, the heavier weight divisions in women have had less exposure or are even not existent. Even with UBF, they only have four women’s weight divisions with the heaviest being 145 ibs or 65.8 kgs. Hopefully, more heavyweight world champions get more exposure can create more opportunities. Not just for the Heavier weights but for all women boxing as a whole.