For the second consecutive year, Knockdown News will ask five questions before we head into 2025. As the year progresses, we’ll see what answers (if any) we can get for our questions. Here’s what is on our mind:
1. With Stipe Miocic out of the way, will heavyweight finally become a proper division again?
UFC’s heavyweight division has been a mess for more than a minute. Last year, the promotion put itself in a position where the only way they could untangle the division’s title picture was if they made not just one, but two title fights, hence why more than a year after crowning an interim champ we’re still having this same conversation about the division being fixed.
We spent all of 2024 with two champions representing the 265-pound class: Jon Jones with the main belt, and Tom Aspinall carrying an interim title. Now that Jones has beaten Miocic in a fight that took years to make and, quite honestly after it happened did not feel worth the wait, can the UFC finally get the weight class back in order?
It is impossible to gauge what will happen at heavyweight. Jones has been adamant that he shouldn’t face Aspinall, and instead chase fights like a clash against Alex Pereira. Is that a genuine wish, or is he just politicking in the public eye as part of his negotiation for the fight? It is hard to tell.
The combination of Jones’ hesitance to fight, mixed with the fact that he has been relatively inactive over the past few years, isn’t the most reassuring sign regarding whether he will appear in a title unification this year.
If the UFC can condense their heavyweight class down to just one champion, it will fix a mess they got themselves into more than a year ago. If not, it will only continue what has been an embarrassing mismanagement saga for them.
2. Will the ‘Poatan’ parade continue in 2025?
2024 was nothing short of dominant for Alex Pereira at light heavyweight. He wiped the floor with some of the division’s biggest contenders, beating Jamahal Hill, Jiri Prochazka, and Khalil Rountree Jr. all within a short timeframe.
The combination of activity and success that Pereira has seen at a championship level as of late is quite hard to sustain. So, it’s only fair to wonder what 2025 will look like for the most active champ in the world.
Next year could pose some interesting challenges for Pereira, namely a seemingly inevitable fight against first-place contender Magomed Ankalaev. The Russian, whose sole title shot ended in a draw two years ago, hasn’t lost since 2018. He has beaten a long list of tough names, including talents like Aleksandar Rakic, Johnny Walker, and Volkan Oezdemir.
Experts see Ankalaev as a big test for Pereira, at least bigger than some of the fights he received in 2024. Can the champ get past him, and if successful can he continue to flourish both activity-wise and fight-wise?
Beyond Ankalaev, Pereira could possibly face the winner of an upcoming matchup between Jan Blachowicz and Carlos Ulberg. Blachowicz is a former opponent of Pereira’s who lost a narrow and even controversial split decision over a year ago. Ulberg would be a new name in the title picture, something that has become hard to find in a division that has become so dominated by one man.
Pereira had an incredible 2024, but the assignments never stop for a champ. The next fight for Pereira could possibly be his hardest yet. Will we be talking about “Poatan” with the same incredible praise a year from now?
3. Will we ever see Conor McGregor fight again?
If I had a dollar for every time talk about a Conor McGregor return emerged, I’d be retired by now.
Discussion about a McGregor return appears basically every week, most recently being brought up as the former champ hyped a boxing exhibition against influencer Logan Paul. But, the truth is we haven’t seen him fight in over three years.
For quite some time, a McGregor return has been an empty promise. With other business ventures and focuses, it’s been forever since McGregor had MMA as his sole hustle.
Will 2025 be more of the same? McGregor smack-talks the hot fighter of the month, does some public antics and mentions hopes of returning, only for nothing to come of it? Or will we get another fight from the biggest MMA figure, finally ending a time away from the cage that many have discussed for years?
And if McGregor returns, what will that be like? Will his time away, for better or worse, be reflected in how he fights? Will it push him further into a losing streak? And will there be more backlash than before, given McGregor’s highly publicized legal battle in Dublin this year which found him liable for rape in a civil case? It’s a news cycle that would end the careers of many, but the sport of MMA has proven to be alarmingly chill about such serious topics.
There are a lot of questions surrounding McGregor’s career. If 2025 is anything like the years before, we’ll get answers to none of them.
4. How will Valentina Shevchenko do against the new wave of flyweight contenders?
After a three-fight rivalry with Alexa Grasso – a saga which put an end to her initial incredibly long flyweight title run and gave her the first bit of major adversity in her career since a 2017 loss to Amanda Nunes – Valentina Shevchenko is back on top of the flyweight division and eyeing her next opponent.
The three-fight feud with Grasso, which came to an end with a dominant Shevchenko victory at UFC 306 in September, tied up the Kyrgyzstan-based fighter for two years. And because of that, Shevchenko is now returning to a flyweight division which has undergone some massive changes.
Fighters ranked two to six in the flyweight division have all yet to face Shevchenko, providing a lengthy list of possible challenges that the champ could explore. There are tough contenders like Manon Fiorot, Erin Blanchfield and Natalia Silva who have been on a roll for years and have never fought for a belt. While 125 pounds was for long a division where there wasn’t new blood, the opposite could be said now.
Shevchenko’s lengthy rivalry with Grasso, while it took a long time, allowed the flyweight division to rebuild contenders for the title. And heading into 2025, the weight class is more interesting than it has been in years. Will an up-and-coming name make Shevchenko’s second title reign short-lived, or will the champ simply continue to dominate the class she has ruled since 2018?
5. Will the GFL become a real player or a quick fad?
It’s not surprising that the announcement of the Global Fight League (GFL) earlier this month turned heads. If you plan on having a roster of more than 100 fighters, a season and playoff structure which likely promises a busy event schedule, and unprecedented fighter benefits like 50 percent revenue share and retirement funds, you’re launching a project which could make huge changes to the industry.
If GFL lives up to what they bill themselves as, they could be the newest player in what you could consider the “major” network of MMA promotions. While undoubtedly not having a chance at going up against the UFC, which dominates the sport’s market like no other, they could emerge as a strong challenger brand like the PFL or Bellator prior to being sold in 2023.
But with no events announced and a highly important media deal yet to be attained, the GFL still has a lot to prove before they can be considered a huge development for the industry. They have agreements in place with fighters, but besides that, we actually haven’t seen anything.
Since all the details about the GFL remain so vague, the promotion could be everything it says it will be or nothing. With hard deadlines in place for when things will happen – a draft for their team system taking place in January and a debut event in April – we will know soon if GFL is the real deal.
Five more quick-fire questions: Will UFC stay with ESPN/Disney? Will PFL be able to make Dakota Ditcheva’s star rise even further? Will Bellator have any place in PFL’s branding, including their titles, a year from now? Will the UFC find a fresh challenge for Alexandre Pantoja? Will Kayla Harrison hold a UFC belt by the end of the year?
Answering Past Questions
At the end of 2023, we asked five questions regarding this year. Now that the past 12 months have come and gone, we finally have answers to the questions we asked:
1) Which UFC Division Will Be The Most Consistent?
At the end of 2023, I made the observation that even among those in the UFC who were champions, few were deep into a reign. “Out of the 10 UFC divisions that currently have an active titleholder in them, just three of those champions have defended their belt more than once,” I wrote.
The same situation cannot be said this year. Sure, we saw a lot of title changes, as half of the dozen active champs gained their belts over the past year. But we also saw some dig further into reigns they started before.
Four divisions stuck out as the most consistent this year: Light heavyweight fighter Alex Pereira defended his title three times, putting him deeper into a title reign in 12 months than some get over the course of a couple of years. Islam Makhachev’s reign over lightweight continued, defending his title for the third time with a win over Dustin Poirier. Alexandre Pantoja continued to clean out flyweight, putting his title on the line twice this year. And while she fought just once in 2024, a win over Yan Xiaonan extended Zhang Weili’s second strawweight reign past the 700-day mark.
Credit must also go to featherweight Ilia Topuria and middleweight Dricus Du Plessis, who not only gained their titles but defended them once within a year.
2) How many champions will heavyweight have at the end of the year?
Oh, how naive I was. There were, and still are, two champions. Due to UFC’s willingness to wait a year before putting together Stipe Miocic vs. Jon Jones, we haven’t seen Jones to unify his belt with interim champ Tom Aspinall.
It’s quite hilarious, and maybe a little frustrating, that a question like this is once again being asked before 2025.
3) Will UFC 300 live up to the hype?
If you were expecting UFC 300 to have something massive, like the return of former stars Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey, or a champion-versus-champion super-fight, you might have been let down. But if you were realistic about what UFC was able to do for the card, you were most likely more than satisfied with how the show went.
UFC 300 was, from start to finish, one of the strongest MMA lineups of all time. It didn’t have the most stacked title offering, with the three five-round matchups all being relatively one-sided performances. But, it had a card which saw star power from the first fight to the last in a way the promotion has never displayed before.
If you wanted a top-heavy lineup which saw a double or triple-main event with incredibly eye-popping matchmaking, you would be disappointed. But if you wanted a card with high-level consistency for more than six hours, something you rarely see from the UFC especially nowadays, 300 was a delight.
4) How will PFL’s 2024 actually go?
PFL delivered on most of their promises in 2024: They hosted their usual season, tournaments in Europe and the Middle East, and finally put together the highly anticipated MMA return of Francis Ngannou. When it comes to events marketed under the PFL name, they had an impressive year overall.
However, their lofty promises with the Bellator brand fell apart. While PFL hoped to use the Bellator “Champions Series” as a way to host non-tournament shows throughout the year and keep their newly-acquired roster active, they simply failed on that goal.
Bellator hosted just five shows in 2024, three less than the already small goal of eight events throughout the year. This level of inactivity has frustrated many of the brand’s top names, with champions Patricio Pitbull and Patchy Mix outright calling for their release.
Heading into 2025, it seems Bellator as a brand is all but gone. The “Champions Series” will continue with a show in January, but it’s hard to not notice that Bellator’s name is excluded from the event title.
It goes without saying that acquiring Bellator was a play PFL made to pick up a roster full of skilled athletes, but that’s not the point. PFL committed to a schedule of eight shows but delivered on five. As the brand hopes to keep expanding in 2025, with Donn Davis hyping a schedule of 30 events over the next 12 months, should there be worry about the wheels falling off the wagon?
5) Where will ONE Championship be a year from now?
Heading into 2024, there was a lot of uncertainty around ONE Championship’s future. Reports from DealStreetAsia showed that further investment from Qatar was almost necessary for the promotion’s survival, as they had roughly a few quarters left of financial runaway. It seemed hard to tell whether we were looking at the end of ONE, or simply a scare.
In October, we finally got our answer: ONE will live on. With an investment of around $50 million from Qatar, the promotion was given the energy to keep operating. Worries about the immediate future of ONE were calmed, but the omnipresent question which has surrounded ONE for years, whether the company will ever stop being solely dependent on investment, remains in place.
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