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I represent the people I also was speaking with back in the day because I was there, and you apparently weren't, but still decided to speak on behalf of first.
I think Wonderboy had a long cemented position in the ranks, unlike strawweight, which had a lot of newer fighters, and a high rate of turnover and meaningless numbers next to their names. He had fought for the title twice, and Burns was a contender too, even pretty recently. They KEPT themselves at the top with repeated wins (like how Waterson had repeatedly proven herself to be the back half of the top 10 in her old age, but yeah, great win for Rodriguez, bud..). Compare that to Xioanan who fought her way to an eliminator and just lost. She was still only freshly in the rankings, and was on the backstep, so there's no reason to think her fight against Marina would have been an eliminator. Again, the Burns fight was specifically called that.
But talking about fresh faces instead of "old" contenders who apparently no one can beat, but them being old means they don't count for some reason: take 2 surging fighters they both fought. Sean Brady was on a 5 fight win streak vs Ribas, who was on 4, but Brady still had 10 pre-UFC fighters under his belt, vs Ribas who came in only at 6-1. That's the different in the experience level you get in the two divisions. The surging fresh faced hot streak in the UFC has twice the win streak Ribas did
You could have just written:
" Belal beating a bunch of old dudes is more impressive than Marina beating a bunch of younger contenders she was favored to lose too"
Instead of trying to pretend it is only about meritocracy.