One of the conundrums facing anyone who tries to put together a pound-for-pound ranking of fighters is how to fairly evaluate those who would, in real life, never have a chance of meeting in a cage.

Newly crowned UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson is 5 feet 3 inches and weighs 125 pounds, yet he's being considered in the same category alongside heavyweight contender Alistair Overeem. Overeem, who is serving a suspension imposed by the Nevada Athletic Commission for failing a random drug test, is 6-5, 265 pounds.

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How does one judge the relative merits of Overeem versus Johnson when their physical dimensions are so vastly different and it is impossible for them ever to meet?

That problem, though, is nothing compared to the decision whether to include women in one global pound-for-pound list.

When Yahoo! Sports began doing a pound-for-pound ranking in 2007, it was not expressly listed as a men's poll, but it was assumed to be as much. Women's mixed martial arts was hardly a blip on the radar in those days and few outside of the hardest of the hardcore fans paid it much attention.

More and more women, though, are opting to fight and the quality of the female athletes in the sport has never been better. That is only going to increase as women are given more opportunities.

Though UFC president Dana White still is concerned that there isn't enough depth to create a women's division in his company, anyone who has seen women fighting on cards such as Strikeforce and Invicta knows they're both talented athletes and entertaining fighters.

And so came the inevitable issue: Should a woman be eligible to be included in the monthly Yahoo! Sports pound-for-pound rankings? MMA reporter Dave Deibert of Post Media in Canada pushed the issue to the forefront when he included Strikeforce bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey ninth on his Top 10 list.

The rankings are the result of the vote of 20 or so MMA journalists, who are asked to vote for who they feel are the 10 best fighters in the world. The only restrictions they're given are that they can't vote for a fighter who hasn't competed in a year, nor can they vote for someone who is on suspension. UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre isn't ranked and bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz will be ineligible next month, because of inactivity. Overeem and UFC welterweight Nick Diaz are both on suspension so are ineligible.

Upon receiving Deibert's vote for Rousey, I emailed the panel and asked their views on including Rousey, or any other woman, in what heretofore has been an exclusively male Top 10. The issue is beyond whether or not Rousey deserves to be in the Top 10, but rather whether she should even be eligible for it.

[Related: MMAWeekly's top 10 rankings by division]

The simple solution would be to create a separate women's poll, as is done in college basketball. The problem that would arise is that the majority of voters don't see enough female fights to make a valid assessment of their relative abilities. The women who fight regularly on television – largely Rousey, Miesha Tate and Sarah Kaufman – would have a massive advantage over the rest of the field.

Hopefully, that time will come when the women's version of the sport is as ubiquitous as the men's, but it hasn't arrived yet.

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