Crossover MMA-Boxing Fights We'd Love to See in the Next Year

Go ahead, admit it. You can't help but be curious.

When one athlete has ascended to the peak of their chosen combat sport and another athlete has climbed atop theirs, it's only natural to wonder what would happen if boundary lines were crossed and they got together.

And if you can bank a few million along the way, even better.

Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr. set the bar high for MMA/boxing crossovers a few years back when they drew 4.3 million pay-per-view buys to watch them duke it out for 10 rounds in a ring at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The fact that they combined to rake in a guaranteed $130 million was enticement enough to make others follow the recipe, too, and the B/R combat team decided to look at the current batch of fighters we'd like to see give it a go in 2025 and 2026.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.

Ilia Topuria vs. Terence Crawford

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OK, we'll concede to a little recency bias here.

For those unaware, the 37-year-old Crawford picked up a career-defining victory earlier this month when he schooled Canelo Alvarez over 12 rounds in Las Vegas, and his victory was both preceded and followed by chirping from Topuria, a two-division UFC champion who's long considered himself the promotion's top boxer.

Crawford has denied interest in the clash and branded Topuria a clout chaser, but it hasn't stopped the Georgian-Spaniard's chatter, and we admit to being among those who'd pull up a chair to watch if Dana White ever signed off on it happening.

Michael Bisping, a UFC hall of famer, doesn't consider it an impossibility.

"Dana just did business with Terence Crawford," he said.

"Ilia Topuria is under contract with the UFC. So, it's not unbelievable to think of a world where this might happen. It's just, would Crawford lower himself? Would he want to step in the ring with somebody like that? You never know because what else is there out there for him?"

Sean O'Malley vs. Ryan Garcia

Ed Mulholland/Zuffa LLC

"Suga Sean" was a rising UFC star and its bantamweight champion not too long ago, but his shine has been significantly dulled thanks to smotherings by Merab Dvalishvili last September (UD 5) and again in June (SUB 3).

Meanwhile, "King Ry" had a signature win over Devin Haney overturned by a failed drug test and a subsequent title shot against an unheralded Rolando Romero ended in an upset loss.

Garcia suggested a year ago that his positive results handling a member of his security team in a wrestling scrum would allow him to "destroy" O'Malley in the UFC, to which the jiu-jitsu brown belt soon responded that the claim was "stupid" and "delusional" and that he would "kill (Garcia) within minutes."

The chatter has died down in recent months as each man's stock has plummeted, but it's no stretch to suggest the jolt of an actual bout would be a welcome competitive diversion for both.

Sign us up.

Francis Ngannou vs. Deontay Wilder

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Quoting Jim Lampley in Ocean's Eleven, Ngannou and Wilder have spent parts of the last several years in an intermittent "dance around and toward each other."

For a time, Ngannou was the UFC's heavyweight champion and heir to Mike Tyson's "baddest man on the planet" throne, while Wilder held a share of boxing's big man title from 2015 to 2020 after a bronze medal run in the 2008 Olympics.

Things have gone competitively south in subsequent years, but the mere mention of the other's name still gets both rivals, each now 39 years old, fired up.

"Things are warming up," Wilder said earlier this month. "He's acknowledged what he wants to do. He's sent out the message and I've replied. I've acknowledged that I'm serious, willing, ready and able to do what it takes to get this fight."

Ngannou went the distance with then-champ Tyson Fury in 2023 but was squashed in two rounds by Anthony Joshua five months later. Wilder, meanwhile, was 1-4 with three KO losses from 2020 to 2024, but returned for a seventh-round TKO over Tyrrell Herndon in June.

"We haven't engaged personally, but it's gonna be soon," Ngannou said. "We are setting some things up."

Conor McGregor vs. Jake Paul

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When it comes to novelty bouts, there is none bigger.

McGregor cashed in for the aforementioned scrap with Mayweather but has faded from competitive relevance since, winning just one of four UFC fights and not appearing in any sanctioned combative environment since 2021.

But he still knows how to generate buzz. And who better as a counterpart in that endeavor than Paul, who's feasted on former UFC tough guys Ben Askren, Tyson Woodley (twice), Anderson Silva, Nate Diaz and Mike Perry while building his insurgent boxing record to 12-1 and his YouTube subscriber list to 20.9 million.

He'll encounter a real boxer, albeit a real small one, in November when he stands across from multi-division champ Gervonta Davis, who's 7.5 inches shorter, has an 8.5-inch disadvantage in reach and weighed 60-plus pounds less for his last fight.

Presuming he survives the exhibition gauntlet in Miami (and unless current heavyweight boxing champ Oleksandr Usyk takes him up on a challenge in the meantime) there's no one more fitting to help draw a crowd than McGregor, whose pre-fight banter with the always-willing Mayweather was click-generating gold in 2017.

And the "Notorious" one proved he still had the chops last year, when he took to social media to label the "Problem Child" as "the biggest p--sbag I have ever seen in my life," a tirade that yielded an insistence from Paul that McGregor would ultimately balk because of fear.

"He can talk all the f--k he wants," Paul said, "but the 'Notorious' MMA is scared of Jake Joseph Paul from Disney Channel. And I put that on my mama."