UFC: Predicting the Champions a Year from Now
The business of being a UFC champion is pretty chaotic.
You work for years to become an expert in your craft. You spend hours upon hours punching and kicking, being punched and kicked, serving as choker and chokee in sweatbox gyms around the world as you try to get yourself to the summit. That doesn’t even acknowledge the hours of roadwork, the time away from family, the dieting and cutting weight and the other sacrifices no one ever hears about as you’re making that climb.
Once you hit the top of the mountain, the volatility of being the main target at your weight, coupled with everyone else always improving, the sport naturally evolving and the general winging about of four-ounce gloves, means you’re basically living to die from the minute Dana White straps that belt around your waist. It takes an athlete with unique talent and drive to get there, but it requires a whole other level of commitment to stay there.
With that in mind, it’s worth noting that a year is a lifetime in MMA. Champions of the present could be unranked afterthoughts within a few fights. Folks you’ve never heard of could be challenging for titles after a couple of surprise wins. USADA could strike at anytime and turn hero champions into pariahs.
It’s a crazy sport, and predicting who’ll hold gold a year down the road is the ultimate fool’s errand. And yet here we are, attempting to do exactly that. Let’s take a look into the crystal ball and see what we can uncover on how the UFC title pictures may look in the not-too-distant future.
Women’s Strawweight: Joanna Jedrzejczyk
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There is a single universal truth in the women’s strawweight division: No one is as good as Joanna Jedrzejczyk, and no one is going to be for the foreseeable future.
Between her remarkable striking, which is among the best in MMA regardless of gender, her takedown defense and her ruthless killer instinct, she’s a shark swimming among minnows. She is essentially, at this stage in the game, a perfect fighter; she knows what she does well, she knows how people are going to try to stop her and she works on closing up the holes in her game so that her areas of expertise can shine through with maximum effect.
Most felt Claudia Gadelha was her toughest test by a wide margin, and she out-gutted and outgunned the Brazilian in their second meeting during International Fight Week, putting her in the rearview mirror forever. Beyond Gadelha, anyone else who’s had the misfortune of meeting the champion has been diced to pieces within minutes and found themselves holding on for the moral victory of surviving to the final bell.
Few have even succeeded to that extent.
There simply isn’t anyone else out there who can test her at this point. Some women might give her minor fits in very brief spells during a fight, but it’s hard to imagine most even winning a round, much less three of the required five to snatch her title.
With some more seasoning Jessica Andrade may be a threat given her powerful wrestling and grappling, but even that seems unlikely for a year down the line given the technical shortcomings in her stand-up game. Rose Namajunas is perhaps the division’s top prospect, but her chance to truly contend with Jedrzejczyk is still probably a year or more in the future.
Overall it’s probably best to get used to the idea of Joanna Champion. She’s around for a while.
Women’s Bantamweight: Julianna Pena
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The women’s 135-pound title has been something of a hot potato in the post-Ronda Rousey era, with three women holding it as of this writing and none having defended it successfully. A very strong case exists that this upheaval has made the division far more competitively interesting over the past year, as there’s a legitimate chance half the division could hold the title if they’re given a shot at it.
A number of ladies in the top 10 are comparably talented and athletic, and they almost seem destined to beat up on each other indefinitely until someone emerges on the other side as a constant. By this time next year, Pena seems poised to be that fighter. She’s undefeated in the UFC, has a style that is unique in its ferocity and force and she isn’t shy about negotiating through the media in the name of staking her claim to top contendership, including this interview with Sporting News.
She’s also a little more of a pure athlete than contemporaries like Holly Holm, Miesha Tate, Amanda Nunes or Cat Zingano and has youth on her side as compared to them all. Her trajectory is upward, while those around her have stagnated or are heading into decline. At a time of great flux, these are traits that can support a championship run and should within the year.
Should Rousey not return, Pena will likely take the title from Nunes if she gets the chance. If Rousey returns and beats Nunes (which is a bigger “if” than people want to admit), Pena’s durability, wrestling and horsepower would be a major challenge for the Olympic bronze medallist in her first title defense—one she would likely succumb to.
Flyweight: Demetrious Johnson
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Death, taxes and Demetrious Johnson as the best 125-pounder alive. That’s just the way it is.
In a weight class that is essentially devoid of top-end talent to begin with, Johnson has already beaten any guy who matters. Many of them twice. It’s gotten so bad, the UFC had to concoct a season of The Ultimate Fighter around finding random regional flyweights and building a tournament for the winner to land a challenge of "Mighty Mouse."
The last time something even close to that was conceived was The Ultimate Fighter 4, when random UFC washouts were brought in to fight their way to a shot at Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, respectively. If you’re being mentioned in the same breath as those two, and the same reality show is being used to find challengers for you in a similar fashion, you’re in incredibly rarified air.
Furthermore, it’s not even a secret anymore as to why Johnson is so dominant. You all know the story: He’s technically masterful, he’s good everywhere, his speed is unmatched and he’s still adding new wrinkles to his game. It’s become such a mantra of Joe Rogan as he sits cageside, people are almost offended to hear it at this point, even if it is an undeniably accurate assessment of the promotion’s smallest male titleholder.
He’s so far ahead of the curve, people still talk about the time John Dodson knocked him down almost four years ago or the time Ian McCall convincingly took a round from him almost five years ago. When those are your notable pitfalls as a mixed martial artist, you’re doing pretty well.
This belt is his for as long as he wants it, and that includes a year from now.
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Bantamweight: TJ Dillashaw
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A year from now TJ Dillashaw will be your bantamweight champion for a second time. That may come as a shock to some people given how good Dominick Cruz has looked since returning from injury, but get ready for it to go down.
There’s been a manufactured narrative surrounding Dillashaw’s first fight with Cruz. People, largely the media in fact—perhaps because Cruz is among their ranks and they love and respect his analysis—have come to think Dillashaw was blown out when they tangled in Boston in early 2016.
That is very much not the case.
It was a hotly contested bout where both sides bounced around the cage with technical flair, striking and scoring and alternating between who was leading. It was a great fight, maybe the best bantamweight has ever seen, and it truly could have gone either way.
Since then Dillashaw got back to work, tightening up his game and visibly improving on elements that would mesh well in a rematch with Cruz. It wasn’t that Cruz was astronomically better the first time, instead it was that Dillashaw simply didn’t impose his game enough as they fought. He’s the only man who can match Cruz’s juking and jiving step-for-step, but too often he was mesmerized into being the follower instead of the leader in the first bout.
Change that and he’ll change the outcome.
In a piece of foreshadowing, he topped Raphael Assuncao at UFC 200, rectifying a close decision loss he suffered in 2013, and has been lobbying for another chance at Cruz, including this interview with MMA Junkie Radio. That fight might yet go to the fast-rising Cody Garbrandt, but if Dillashaw gets it again, look for him to rectify a second close decision loss and become champion once more.
Featherweight: Jose Aldo
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A year from now Jose Aldo will hold one of the strangest distinctions in MMA history: He’ll be the only man to have ever lost his title and continue to hold it without delay.
After Conor McGregor ended his reign in savage fashion at UFC 194, Aldo held out until he got a shot at an (totally pointless) interim title at UFC 200. He battered Frankie Edgar to win it, and if McGregor doesn’t want to return to featherweight to unify those belts (and there’s reason to believe he won’t), Dana White told NBC Sports Radio (h/t Fox Sports) it's time for the Irishman to forfeit the 145-pound title. Should that happen, Aldo will become the undisputed champion once again, and this whole bizarre saga will be over.
Aldo is the second-best man at 145 pounds as of today, but he’s drastically better than those around him. He’s often criticized for being overly conservative or uninspired, but he remains one of the toughest outs in the sport even in the face of what McGregor did to him. Look no further than the version of Aldo who showed up against Edgar, clad in pirate-themed facial hair and laser-focused on guiding Jersey’s favorite son all around the cage and into vicious combinations and counters for 25 minutes.
It was poetry in motion—the kind that most fighters wouldn’t manage to interpret if they had a hundred years working to figure it out.
Although there are some rising commodities like Max Holloway and some interesting options like Anthony Pettis, it’s hard to imagine Aldo dropping the title to anyone beyond his infamous Irish foil. The man was undefeated for a decade for a reason, and once McGregor is gone he’ll reign for a while again.
Lightweight: Khabib Nurmagomedov
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Directly related to the previous slide, we have the lightweight title picture and the impending muddiness that the year ahead will bring it.
As of today Eddie Alvarez holds the belt, and it appears the fighting Philadelphian is fixing to mix it up with Conor McGregor before the end of the year. That fight, should it come to fruition, is a nightmare matchup on paper for McGregor, who’ll have to stave off a larger man with tireless grinding and wrestling at his disposal— an iron jaw and heavy hands of his own.
And yet McGregor always seems to find a way to rise to such occasions. The last time he faced down a similar kryptonite—on a few days’ notice, no less—he memorably blasted Chad Mendes cold with his increasingly legendary left hand to become UFC interim featherweight champion. So let’s say, for argument sake, that trend continues, and he stuns Alvarez when they meet to become the first two-division champion the UFC has ever seen.
He then drops the featherweight title and defends the lightweight title in early 2017 against Khabib Nurmagomedov. That’s where the luck of the Irish runs out.
Nurmagomedov is an immovable object to McGregor’s irresistible force, an even grindier grinder than Alvarez who is among the strongest, most technically astute grapplers the sport has ever seen at any weight. It surely won’t be pretty when it happens, but look for him to push McGregor against the cage, tire him out, throw him around and eventually win a decision to become the promotion’s first-ever Russian titleholder.
Welterweight: Demian Maia
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The path to Demian Maia as a world champion a year from now is as unique and unusual as Maia himself. A quiet, humble, largely one-dimensional jiu-jitsu player, the Brazilian has made a name as one of the best welterweights alive by essentially telling opponents what he’s going to do and then daring them to try and stop him.
Nobody can.
At UFC 205 Tyron Woodley will make his first title defense against Stephen Thompson, a fight Thompson will win in a fashion similar to his stoppage of Johny Hendricks: He’ll frustrate a powerful wrestler-boxer with spacing and strikes from unusual angles, likely without taking on much damage, and eventually score a vicious knockout blow Woodley never sees coming or simply can’t withstand if he does. It will be violent and convincing, and there’s a very good chance Joe Rogan will ask viewers “who can stop that man?!” when he sees it unfold.
The answer is Maia.
Thompson will line up a bout with Maia, who awaits the winner, for early next summer. Maia, as he has in every fight he’s had at 170 pounds, will use his rudimentary striking to find a comfortable distance and then look for Thompson to close it in hopes of landing something. When he does, Maia will clinch, drag him to the ground, take his back and secure a choke.
It will be the culmination of one of the most shocking runs to a title in UFC history, one that leaves people with an even further appreciation of jiu-jitsu and the skill required to implement it at the very highest levels of the game.
Middleweight: Luke Rockhold
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No, a year from now Luke Rockhold is not going to be a professional model. He might have some of that action cooking on the side, but it will not be his main focus and saying anything otherwise is simply trying to shake down the UFC for a few extra zeros on the end of a paycheque.
A year from now Rockhold will have reclaimed his spot atop the UFC’s middleweight division—a road back that will start with a win over Ronaldo Souza in November. When he succeeds there, he’ll be matched up against the winner of UFC 205’s Chris Weidman/Yoel Romero fight for a chance at redemption against Michael Bisping (who’ll get revenge against Dan Henderson at UFC 204).
With the motivation of getting back to Bisping fuelling him, Rockhold will win convincingly in his fight to secure a title shot and begin immediately with nasty trash talk directed at the champion. He’s been unhappy about his title loss since the second it happened and he’s been unhappy about Bisping as a human being for even longer than that.
This saga sets up an intriguing trilogy bout between two men who genuinely despise each other and have an insatiable desire to deal one another serious pain. In what will end up as the definitive grudge match of 2017, Rockhold will stop Bisping in the second round and exhibit unapologetic poor sportsmanship toward his fallen foe on his way to becoming one of the more passionately disliked UFC champions in recent memory.
Light Heavyweight: Jon Jones
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Though Jon Jones is shrouded in uncertainty as to if or when he’ll come back to the UFC at all, there is one thing that is totally undeniable when he’s an active combatant: Nobody at 205 pounds can touch him.
Jones is the single-greatest talent the sport has ever known, and his excellence has only ever been marred by his own capacity for self-destruction and belligerence. He’s physically gifted in ways no other fighter ever has been, his work ethic has become underrated as a result of the stories about his extracurricular activities and he has a resume full of wins over light heavyweight legends.
As of now it looks like Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson will meet up later in the year in a redux of their UFC 187 meeting. Cormier will survive an early scare in a manner similar to the first fight, eventually grinding Johnson down on his way to a decision win. The UFC will tell him Jones is next, he’ll complain a bit and make Jones jump through some hoops, but then discretion will get the better part of valor when he realizes the payday a Jones grudge match will provide, and he’ll sign for the fight.
From there Jones will march in and simply outclass Cormier, much as he did when they fought at UFC 182 but by a wider margin. Cormier will struggle with Jones’ size, strength and reach, and the natural decline of age will catch up to him as he fights a well-rested athlete entering his absolute physical prime.
Cormier will gut it out to the tune of ending up on the wrong end of a decision and will retire and work as a Fox analyst, while Jones will have reclaimed his rightful place at the top of the light heavyweight heap.
Heavyweight: Cain Velasquez
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When Cain Velasquez shows up for work, nobody in the heavyweight division is better. No one is even close, actually.
He comes in to inflict pain from bell to bell, overwhelming some of the biggest, strongest, nastiest dudes on the planet with sheer high-octane offense. It’s beautiful to watch for anyone who isn’t a close friend or relative of his opponent (victim?)—a masterful array of wrestling and kickboxing brought together seamlessly.
According to Steven Marrocco and John Morgan of MMA Junkie, Velasquez will likely be booked to rematch Fabricio Werdum at UFC 207. Velasquez will surprise some people by getting his redemption for a pathetic performance against Werdum at UFC 188. He’ll be dominant, driving Werdum against the cage and mauling him in the clinch until he lands a big shot and overwhelms the stunned Brazilian on the ground. When the ref pulls him off, he’ll be asking for a shot at Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title.
When he gets it he’ll approach it in a fashion that has become his vintage: Take the guy down, get to a dominant position and smash him until he can’t be smashed any more. The peak of such an approach was on display at UFC 200 against Travis Browne, and while Miocic is light-years beyond Browne in every measurable way, very few people can withstand the barrage Velasquez puts out when he’s imposing his game.
It will go as long as Miocic's considerable will and durability allow it to, but Cain Velasquez will be world champion again, and he’ll be holding that belt a year from now.
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