Monday Mailbag: Predicting new champions, UFC 300, and the future for Jon Jones

2023 is officially in the books!

That’s right kiddos, it’s 2024 and you know what that means: new year, same old nonsense. The MMA world is still a few weeks away from waking back up so we put out an open call for questions about what’s to come this year and we got a ton of them covering just about every topic. Given that, we’re shooting for volume here, so let’s hop right in.

New Champions

For the past two years, the esteemed Shaheen Al-Shatti and I have done a fantasy draft at the start of every year, picking three new champions to hold UFC gold by Dec. 31; We’ve failed spectacularly. Of our combined 12 selections over those years, we’ve correctly predicted two: Islam Makhachev and Amanda Nunes (when she had lost to title to Julianna Peña). The point being, predicting new champions is hard, so I don’t have a lot of faith in these. That being said, here’s my list:

1. Erin Blanchfield: Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko will settle up, and Blanchfield gets winner. She beats either.
2. Tom Aspinall: Jon Jones fights Stipe Miocic and retires. Tom becomes undisputed champion.
3. Shavkat Rakhmonov: He finally gets a title shot at the end of the year, and whether it’s Leon Edwards or Belal Muhammad, Shavkat wins.

And if you don’t accept Aspinall as a choice because he’s interim already, then I’ll say Tatiana Suarez. Khamzat Chimaev is tempting, but it’s tough to predict when and if he will fight. Suarez should get a crack at gold and I like her chances to win it.

Jon Jones

Jon Jones will fight in 2024. He’ll face Stipe Miocic in a fight that is meaningless and that no one cares about. It will probably happen in the summer. And once that is over, Jones will stop competing. I think he will retire, but he might simply just say he’s taking a break. Either way, he won’t fight again and the UFC will remove the paper title from around his waist and hand it to Tom Aspinall, who will make the belt at least some level of meaningful.

To be clear, I don’t blame Jones for this. This is textbook career management. Minimize risk, maximize reward, particularly deep into your career when legacy is already set in stone. But I also refuse to pretend that this is anything other than a shameless vanity play. This title run is a farce and the sooner we can complete it and move on with real heavyweight championship stuff, the better.

Alexander Volkanovski

Inadvertently, I’ve become MMA’s leading Volk hater, and that’s fine. I can accept that mantle. But because I have that title, many will dismiss what I say here. Just know that what I’m about to say is straight facts, regardless of my views on Volk.

If Ilia Topuria knocks out Alexander Volkanovski to claim the featherweight title when they fight at UFC 298, Volk’s entire career will get reconsidered. Is that fair? Absolutely not. But I’ve been around this rodeo long enough to know that’s what’s coming.

Look at Jose Aldo. The man is objectively the most accomplished featherweight in history, but he got 13-seconds’ed, and then beat up by Max Holloway and suddenly the previous seven years didn’t mean s***. Once the public sees you fall, the wolves are at the door.

If Volk loses to Topuria, and loses badly, the wolves are coming, especially because then he will almost certainly get an immediate rematch. He loses that one too? Yeesh. 1-4 in your last five hurts, regardless of who those losses are coming against. And suddenly, like we’ve seen with so many dominant champions the past few years, the conversations about being the greatest ever all fall away, and people remember that the hardest thing to do in MMA is to defend a title over and over again, for years on end. There’s a reason only six fighters in history have seven or more title defenses.

UFC 300

Well, we now know that dream isn’t going to happen. However, just because Conor won’t fight Nate then, doesn’t mean we can’t still bring Nate back. I don’t personally care too much about this one, but I think there is a decent shot we get Nate Diaz vs. Dustin Poirier at UFC 300, as it’s the sort of fight that is big enough to make the event itself feel massive.

But if I get to choose a fight that I want, give me Dricus du Plessis vs. Khamzat Chimaev for the UFC middleweight title. I think DDP is going to beat Sean Strickland for the belt (though I won’t be surprised if Strickland defies expectations again), and while that is one of my most anticipated fights on the calendar at the moment, the prospect of DDP vs. Khamzat is among my favorite possible fights to make. Two overwhelmingly violently fighters who simply impose their physicality on opponents. Like middleweight Kong vs. Godzilla. Sign me the hell up.

The Ultimate Fighter

The Ultimate Fighter will never die so long as Dana White runs the UFC. He’s basically said as much and I have to imagine that from a financial sense, it’s still viable for the promotion. It is TV programming the can sell after all. But we’re long past the days when it mattered for any other reason and even Conor McGregor coaching couldn’t help. It will just continue as it is forever, and maybe occasionally a worthwhile fighter will come out of it.

As for coaches, I doubt is, just because I don’t know that either Stipe or Jon would be interested in doing that. There’s just such minimal upside for either of them, especially since both men are extremely likely to retire after their inevitable fight. We’ll probably get Mayra Bueno Silva and Julianna Peña.

UFC Drug Testing

So long as it is still testing for drugs out of competition, I will dislike and drug testing protocol. It’s overly invasive, exceedingly expensive, stupid, and it doesn’t work. There is no benefit to drug testing out of competition, in my opinion. I don’t even really care about in-competition testing, but I’ve accepted that everyone else believes this is a necessity for — reasons.

When the UFC killed USADA to support Conor McGregor I laughed, loudly. I have almost no respect for USADA as an institution and them trying to get on a high horse over the stupidest thing possible, only to lose millions of dollars as a result is objectively hilarious. I had hoped that the UFC would take this opportunity to pare back it’s anti-doping stances and simply move forward into a more sensible world where science is allowed to help humans be the best versions of themselves. Instead, it appears the UFC is attempting to recreate USADA only without the thin layer of separation between itself and the fighters that at least allowed everyone to pretend that this is legit.

Now the UFC just straight up pays its own employees to operate this thing, and they hired a dude who trains at the biggest gym in the world to run in. If this isn’t the textbook definition of a kangaroo court, it’s getting close. Fortunately, as only idiots and people without any resources ever fail drug tests these days, it won’t ultimately matter (seriously, who was the last top fighter to get a serious suspension from USADA? T.J. Dillashaw? You think every good fighter in the world is living clean? C’mon, man!).

As for the other questions:

1. See below
2. No. The UFC will never have incentive to co-promote in the MMA space. It would be stupid to do so.
3. Most likely, but that will be up to the UFC. ESPN and the UFC have a perfect relationship and so the most obvious answer is they stay together, but some other streaming service could come with big money and steal the UFC away. ESPN re-signing PFL is a cheap hedge to have some MMA content if that happens.

Please, no.

The only acceptable answer to this question for anyone should be Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic. It’s a meaningless fight that is tying up a divisional title. Stipe will be pushing 42 and won’t have fought in three years — there is no point to this. The UFC should present Jones with the option of retiring or fighting the interim champion and we should all be more willing to move on to the new era of MMA instead of desperately clinging to the late 2010s.

Runner up is any champ vs. champ fight, and I’m glad to see that more people are starting to join me on this corner. Superfights are cool because they are super, because there existed a real moment where the only thing that made sense was to see these two champions collide, because they had beaten everyone else that had a claim to the belt. Now, every fighter sees it as a fast pass to immortality. And you know what, it is. Being a champ-champ is significant and gets you into the Hall of Fame its WAY easier to do than defending a belt five, six, seven times. I understand the impulse of fighters, but it’s on the promotion to shut that s*** down. Lately, the UFC has not been doing that, and it’s been a tough hang.

Business

A highly doubt a recession will affect either PFL or ONE in 2024 for similar but very different reasons.

For PFL, it’s a highly unprofitable company, but it’s not supposed to be at this point. PFL is built like a start-up with the first several years working as a planned money pit until they can get to some turning point and BAM, they’ve got market share in a multi-billion dollar industry. The people backing this endeavor have deep pockets and PFL has objectively passed many benchmarks that make them appear to be on the verge of success (I worked in the start-up industry for nearly a decade, appearance is more important than like, data). 2024 is a big turning-point year for them, but my guess is that 2025 will be the make or break year for PFL.

For ONE, it’s the same math but with a different answer. ONE is a deeply unprofitable company (every MMA organization that isn’t the UFC is a bad business, and the “bigger” that promotion is, the worse is it financially) but unlike PFL, ONE is out of investor rope. ONE has burned through a cartoonish sum of money and brings in pennies every year. The game is up and the promotion seems destined for bankruptcy by the end of 2024, recession or not.

Dark Horse

If you’re talking about in terms of championships, my answer is either Manel Kape or Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera. I think Kape gets a title shot in 2024, and though he already lost to Alexandre Pantoja, I believe he has a shot at getting revenge and the title should the opportunity arise. But two other people on staff agreed with me when we did our 2024 predictions piece and I was the only person to pick Chito so maybe he’s more appropriate?

That feels odd as he’s one of very few fighters we know will fight for a belt in 2024, but even if he wins, I think most expect him to lose the title before the year is out. I’m not so sure. Yes, there are several people I’d pick to beat him, but I also think there’s a good shot he just fights Sean O’Malley again, and I love Chito’s chances in that matchup.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for everyone who sent in Tweets! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send your Tweets to me, @JedKMeshew, and I will answer my favorite ones! Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane, just so long as they are good. Thanks again and see y’all next week.