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.