Several marquee, aging UFC divisions facing significant changes in 2025

In mixed martial arts, as in life, change is inevitable, and just like in life, there are times when the winds of change blow heavier or softer when it comes to the UFC landscape.

Some years feature an abundance of title changes and athletes stepping away from the sport, while others bring familiarity and continuity, and forecasting what the coming year will bring is akin to trying to forecast the weather — at most, we’re all making an educated guess based on the information available to us, and that information can change at any moment.

Looking ahead to 2025, it feels like two of the preeminent divisions in the UFC could be primed for serious changes, as the landscapes in both the lightweight and welterweight ranks are in a position where upheaval seems like a very real possibility.

LOOKING AT LIGHTWEIGHT

While everyone is rightfully focused on the upcoming title fight between Islam Makhachev and Arman Tsarukyan scheduled to take place at UFC 311 in Los Angeles on Jan. 18, a glance beyond those top two figures in the divisional hierarchy presents a picture of a division where everyone from No. 2 to No. 10 in the rankings is at least 33 years old and many of their fighting futures feel uncertain.

Charles Oliveira is 35 years old and 46 fights into his professional career. Although he’s coming off a clear victory last time out, he’s 0-2 against the two men stationed ahead of him in the rankings. Justin Gaethje is 36, has been in 30 professional fights, many of them the human equivalent of a demolition derby, and was last seen being left face-down in the centre of the Octagon at UFC 300.

Dustin Poirier is 35 years old, 40 fights into his career, and has already talked openly about not having much left in tank, while Michael Chandler is 38, coming off consecutive losses, and sports a 1-4 record over his last five UFC appearances. While all of those setbacks came against top contenders, his last quality win inside the Octagon was his first one against Dan Hooker, and that came nearly four years ago at this point.

Max Holloway and Dan Hooker are stationed between frequently verbal sparring partners Poirier and Chandler, and should remain competitive fixtures in the division going forward, with “Blessed” possessing more forward potential than the 34-year-old New Zealander, who is in the midst of the best overall run of success in his UFC career.

Rounding out the top 10 are Mateusz Gamrot (34), Beneil Dariush (35) and Renato Moicano (35), a trio of experienced, skilled competitors who have either not been able to advance beyond this point (Gamrot, Moicano) or missed their opportunity earlier in their career (Dariush) and are now being propped up by much earlier successes.

What makes the presence of so many tenured veterans in the top 10 feel like lightweight is ripe for a complete makeover in 2025 is that there are several skilled and ascending fighters hot on their heels, eager to take their spots and deserving of the opportunity to try to do so in the year ahead.

Rafael Fiziev is 31, already battled Gaethje to a majority decision loss at UFC 286, and should be back from the knee injury he suffered in the early stages of his bout with Gamrot in September 2023 at some point in the coming year. He was a top-10 fighter in the past and has everything it takes to get back there, especially if some of those fighters come back to the pack a little.

Benoit Saint Denis has stumbled in his last two outings, but was favoured to beat Poirier earlier this year and has a “kill or be killed” style that makes him a threat against anyone. Love him or hate him, Paddy Pimblett is 6-0 in the UFC and looked outstanding in his first-round submission win over King Green earlier this year. Jalin Turner has always been entertaining and was close to climbing into the top 10 a couple fights back, and could get there again as he’s still only 29 years old.

Joel Alvarez looks like a future contender, having won four straight and six of his last seven in the UFC, with all of his 22 career wins coming inside the distance and his lone loss in the last several years coming against Tsarukyan.

Beyond the top 15, you have a host of emerging talents that includes Grant Dawson, Fares Ziam, Esteban Ribovics and Mauricio Ruffy that have all shown flashes of top 15 upside, if not higher, and others like Chase Hooper, Daniel Zellhuber, Myktybek Orolbai and Nurullo Aliev that all have promise, but may still need a little more seasoning.

In recent years, those top 10 talents have all been shuffled around in matchups against one another, with the Poirier-Gaethje-Chandler triumvirate leading the way, Oliveira facing (and beating) each of them, and the remainder all having at least one matchup with at least one other member of that group.

While that could very well still be the approach in 2025 — Dariush and Moicano are scheduled to face one another in January — it’s also possible we see competitors like Fiziev, Pimblett and Alvarez get a chance to fight for a spot in the top 10, and while they may not be favoured, they would be live dogs against several of those potential opponents.

A couple big wins for fighters in the lower third of the rankings, coupled with a retirement or two, and the rankings crew paying more attention to recent results instead of historical achievements and the makeup of the lightweight top 15 could easily look quite different by this time next year.

WELTERWEIGHT MUSICAL CHAIRS

Where the lightweight division has a host of ascending talents positioned outside the top 10 and beyond the rankings entirely with the potential to relocate in the coming year, the remodelling of the top end of the welterweight division has already begun, and should continue in 2025.

Shavkat Rakhmonov has risen to become the No. 1 contender and sits at No. 2 in the rankings, while Jack Della Maddalena is 7-0 in the UFC and stationed at No. 4, Sean Brady has lost only once (to current champ Belal Muhammad) and is at No. 5, followed by Joaquin Buckley (6-0 at welterweight) and Ian Machado Garry (15-1 overall) at No. 6 and No. 7, respectively.

Joining that group to round out the top 10 are former champs Leon Edwards (33 years old, No. 1) and Kamaru Usman (37, No. 3), Gilbert Burns (38, No. 8), Colby Covington (36, No. 9) and Geoff Neal (34, No. 10).

The final third of the top 15 feels like a further illustration of why forecasting change in the 170-pound ranks seems reasonable, as the next five in the rankings are Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, Michael Morales, Carlos Prates, Vicente Luque and Michael “Venom” Page, whose next fight is scheduled to take place at middleweight; no word on whether that’s a permanent change or a one-off for this bout.

Edwards is in that “could stick around and be competitive or could fall off” range at 33 years old and having worked extremely hard to originally reach the welterweight summit. How he looks in his next fight should provide answers in terms of which direction he’s more likely to go.

Usman getting overtaken by one of the myriad younger standouts behind him doesn’t seem like a stretch — the former dominant champion has lost three straight after never having lost before, turns 38 in May, and spent the whole of 2024 on the sidelines. His last victory came more than three years ago against Covington, who already ceded ground to the younger set with his loss to Buckley to close out the UFC’s 2024 schedule.

Morales and Prates are a combined 9-0 in the UFC and have won 28 consecutive fights between them, making them prime candidates to potentially overtake veterans like Burns or Thompson, and maybe even Neal, while making a strong push toward the top five, resulting in a division where the fresh names have all risen to the top and the old guard had fallen to the bottom half of the rankings or lost their spots entirely.

Although welterweight doesn’t have as many intriguing up-and-coming names, fighters Rinat Fakhretdinov, Bryan Battle, Oban Elliott and Gabriel Bonfim are all hovering in the “second 15” and ready to take aim at some of those long-tenured veterans sitting between No. 10 and No. 15.

At some point, all those established names are going to have stand opposite members of this next wave of talent pushing forward, and the likelihood that a couple of them are evicted from their place in the rankings feels high.

A GENERAL SUGGESTION

A lot of this “sameness” or stagnation in these divisions where the same names continue to hold down the top spots comes from constantly matching them up against one another, as discussed earlier in regard to the lightweight division.

One way to address this is to stop making emerging talents and potential contenders navigate a gauntlet of established names in order to merit a championship opportunity in favour of just pulling the trigger on some of these fights earlier.

We saw this happen at flyweight earlier this year at UFC 301, and the bout between Alexandre Pantoja and Steve Erceg, who was 3-0 in the UFC and just inside the top 10 at the time, was one of the best of the year. It’s the same reason, despite his not having beaten anyone ranked ahead of him at the moment, Manel Kape should probably be tabbed to face Pantoja next.

In a broader sense, get back to making fights between No. 3 and No. 8, or No. 4 and No. 13, rather than having everyone fight the person sitting next to them. That space between them creates opportunity for organic change and constant movement, both of which are not only essential for keeping a division fresh, but it’s far more entertaining to watch too.