Exclusive | “You Can Do It” Dakota Ditcheva on Being a Woman in MMA and Inspiring the Next Generation
PFL flyweight champion Dakota Ditcheva is becoming one of the clearest voices on what it means to be a woman in MMA and in sport, using her platform to talk about both the pressure and the responsibility that come with success. The 2024 PFL women’s flyweight champion, still undefeated and the first British female MMA world champion, has already banked a $1 million season prize and emerged as a central figure in the league’s women’s roster.
Yet when she speaks about her role, she goes back to the quiet kid she once was and to the example set by her mother, former world champion kickboxer Lisa Howarth.
Dakota Ditcheva’s Message to Women in MMA and Sports
“Just that they can do anything, they can try anything. You know, I’m that girl that was really quiet in school, wasn’t really very confident, but having somebody like my mom, I know the importance of having that someone to look up to and someone to just watch and see,” Ditcheva said in an exclusive interview with LowKickMMA.
“I feel like a lot of inspiration comes from doing. You can talk to people, you can tell them ‘do this, do that,’ you know, ‘you should have the confidence to do this,’ but unless you’re actually doing it yourself and they’re watching you, I feel like that’s what makes the biggest impact.”
Since signing with the PFL in 2022, Ditcheva has finished a string of opponents, captured the PFL Europe women’s flyweight title and then the global women’s flyweight belt with a TKO win over former UFC title challenger Taila Santos in November 2024, securing the $1 million championship bonus and making history as the youngest champion in PFL history. Each step adds weight to her words when she talks about setting standards inside and outside the cage.
“So for me, just going out and fighting and experiencing different things, and just setting the example and showing them by doing it, I feel like it’s my plan to keep going.
“So anything that I kind of want to inspire with, I want to be able to say, ‘Look, watch this, you can do it,’ you know, and that’s kind of my goal. If I’m in the gym all the time working hard, it’s going to inspire other people to do that. If I’m out there experiencing new things and trying new things, it’s going to motivate them to do the same thing. So that’s just my plan, and hopefully I’ll inspire people to do lots of amazing things in the future.”
Ditcheva is honest that the landscape is still uneven, even as women’s combat sports reach new commercial highs. She points to boxing, where Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall headlined an all-female show at London’s O2 in 2022, a card that became the most-watched women’s professional boxing event in history on Sky Sports and drew over two million viewers. Shields, now a three-weight undisputed champion who has since signed one of the most lucrative deals in women’s boxing, and Marshall are part of the same wave Ditcheva sees across combat sports.
“It is hard being a woman in sports, isn’t it, but I feel like we’re slowly building up. There’s so much that has changed over the last few years. And again, going back to my mum, that has changed since she was in sport. It’s just so different,” Ditcheva says, noting how her mother once faced outright exclusion in gyms that now welcome female fighters.
“I think the more females are involved and inspiring, the more it’s going to push. I feel like changes will come when we keep showing up, when we keep inspiring, and getting more involved, and inspiring the younger generation to keep going.
“For example, over the past year, seeing athletes like Claressa Shields and Savannah Marshall secure $1,000,000 contracts shows that women are finally receiving fair opportunities in a sports world that was once male-dominated. And we had a boxing card that was full of females on it. When would we have ever seen that? It’s massive. Those are the kinds of changes I’m talking about.”
Her own inspirations stretch across sports. Shields and Marshall, along with Katie Taylor, helped pull women’s boxing into sold-out arenas and record-breaking streaming shows. Gymnastics star Simone Biles has rewritten expectations of what an athlete can endure and still return to win world and Olympic medals. Ditcheva puts them all on the same shelf.
“I get inspired by athletes in general and it doesn’t have to be in my sport. Claressa Shields, Savannah Marshall, Katie Taylor who are boxers, and then Simone Biles, the gymnast, they’re all so inspiring and doing incredible things. I watch all sports, and everyone motivates me,” she says.
“I feel like people often underestimate how much inspiration athletes can provide. Even as a professional athlete, I’m still inspired by others. So imagine how much they’re inspiring the younger generation as well. That’s why we just need to keep showing up, doing our thing, and slowly more and more people will get involved.”
