Uncrowned’s soothsayers were right on the money with many of our 2025 predictions. Now we're at it again this year, with the boldest of the bold MMA forecasts for 2026.
Last year we rolled out our bold predictions for the MMA year, and a good many of them — for the most part — came true. Petesy Carroll proclaimed that Jon Jones would be stripped of his title. He would’ve been, had he not retired first. Ben Fowlkes anticipated Jones would retire, only to unretire, which is exactly how it went down. And Chuck Mindenhall prophesied that it wouldn’t be Jones who would disappoint Tom Aspinall in 2025, it would be none other than Ciryl Gane.
That part came true, though Aspinall didn’t end up losing.
(Sorry Drake Riggs, the UFC still didn’t bring over the atomweight division from Japan, but Tony Ferguson did at least win something. In fact, he won multiple things!)
The same group of Uncrowned’s soothsayers are at it again this year, with the boldest of the bold MMA predictions for 2026. So bold, in fact, that some might use the word courageous.
1. It will be the Year of Unconventional Things in the UFC
Mindenhall: I don’t know exactly how the Paramount+ era will look, but if the early bookings tell us anything it’s that the UFC is treating its own rankings as Marcel Duchamp treated the Mona Lisa. With Justin Gaethje jumping into an interim lightweight title fight against Paddy Pimblett in a world where Arman Tsarukyan exists, anything is possible in 2026.
When I say anything, I mean weird, unconventional stuff. White House-level strangeness, where cameos by unforeseen players might become a thing. The meritocracy will suffer in a big way. Some of the shark-eyed Russian/Dagestani fighters may get stuck behind a permanent eight-ball when vying for titles, à la Movsar Evloev. One way to beat dogged wrestlers is to freeze them out. With Netflix scoring record numbers by having Jake Paul box different generations of heavyweights, TKO may want the UFC to open its mind.
We’ve seen the odd CM Punk or James Toney fight in the UFC over the years. I think we’ll see some strange crossover fights in 2026, added attractions to fill in the void left by the orgy of title fights being speculated for the White House in June. Maybe it won’t be Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg, but we’re going to take some detours, people.
Mark. My. Words.
2. Paramount will dip a toe into some PPV-ish waters with UFC
Fowlkes: Word is out among those wheelin'-and-dealin' TV executive types. They seem to agree on one thing: Paramount overpaid for the UFC broadcast rights. A billion dollars a year for the rights to stream what is still a fairly niche sport that, just due to the blood and violence alone, is never going to be primetime entertainment the whole family can enjoy?
I mean, it's a feather in the cap for TKO executives, but imagine how many new monthly subscriptions you have to sell to earn that money back. (Against my better judgment, I did some math. Turns out 1 billion divided by 7.99 is something like 125 million. Prior to this deal, Paramount+ had about 79 million subscribers and was adding a million or two per quarter, give or take, while still losing money on streaming overall.)
What I'm saying is, it's not going to be enough. Personally, I’m ecstatic that, for the first time in my roughly quarter-century of MMA fandom, the price to watch is actually going down from year to year. But that don’t pay the freight, as Cy Tolliver might say. That’s why there will inevitably come a point when the suits up top get the idea to reinvent the wheel and sell us some sort of “special” UFC event at a higher price. And if I had to guess, I’d say it’ll happen sometime in this first year.
Why, you ask? Because waiting until year two or three of this deal means letting us get used to a new (and cheaper) world order. Once we start thinking of the UFC as something that is included entirely with the monthly subscription cost, it’ll be damned difficult to get us back into a pay-per-view kind of mindset. They won’t want to try it right away, but they also won’t want to wait too long. They know that MMA fans are like a beaten dog that still flinches when you lift your hand too quickly. We’re glad to see the price go down, but we’re not sure we trust it just yet. So at some point this year they’re going to test us. They’re going to see if we still have that pay-per-view conditioning deep in our bones. They might not call it pay-per-view (close your eyes and imagine Jon Anik saying something like "platinum premiere event," or whatever), but that's what it will amount to.
If enough people cave, we'll be back on the road to pay-per-view before we know it. But if we don’t? Then the powers that be might finally admit that pay-per-view is dead. And good riddance.
3. Seven current and former UFC champs — Zhang, Harrison, Nunes (again), Pereira, Usman, Volknanovski and Makhachev — will all retire in 2026
Riggs: Y’all ready for a retirement party? UFC and WWE both have somewhat of an age problem heading into 2026, at least when it comes to the stars. While I feel much more confident about some of my inclusions than others, all but one of the below are 35 years or older. Let’s walk through the list.
Zhang Weili: The former strawweight champion is deciding where she goes next after relinquishing her belt and taking arguably the worst loss of her career in her bid for flyweight gold. Zhang has a very lengthy and taxing 30-fight career already behind her with nothing left to prove — aside from maybe breaking Joanna Jedrzejczyk's strawweight record for total UFC title defenses. She just needs to win two more title fights at strawweight to do so, which is achievable before 2026 ends.
Kayla Harrison: The roadmap has already been laid out by Harrison. Should she defeat Amanda Nunes on Jan. 24 at UFC 324, a champion vs. champion superfight against Valentina Shevchenko at the White House — or the middle of this year — would be all that's left for her. That goes without even mentioning the toll her cuts to bantamweight take on her body. Harrison has been a professional athlete her entire life, and those two potential wins over arguably the two women's GOATs make for a perfect sendoff.
Alex Pereira: Another champion who has been fighting for his whole life, Pereira seems ready to give heavyweight a try after he reclaimed light heavyweight gold in 2025. At age 38, the fantasy run surely wouldn’t be for an extended period, and if things don’t go his way, there’s no real reason to stick around.
Alexander Volkanovski: “Volk” has accepted his inevitable life post-fighting more and more since he first lost the featherweight title in early 2024. With the UFC seemingly uninterested in giving him challengers that get the blood pumping, Volkanovski's lack of interest could see him retire on top, or he’ll meet his match once more and say farewell.
Kamaru Usman: He practically feels semi-retired at this point, and only wants an illogical title shot against the next name I'm about to mention. Either Usman doesn’t fight at all and retires at some point, or he loses his final shot at gold and calls it a career.
Islam Makhachev: I just can't shake the Khabib Nurmagomedov comparisons with Makhachev. At 34, the guy is the best in the world and clearly can cement himself as a top-three all-time GOAT by defending for the next several years. However, like Nurmagomedov, Makhachev has climbed — and surpassed — a similar mountain of dominance. One or two welterweight title defenses might be all he needs to be fully satisfied, as unfortunate as that would be for us as viewers.
4. Michael Chandler finally gets to fight Conor McGregor
Carroll: For three years, Michael Chandler has been waiting like a coiled spring for Conor McGregor to make it to the dance. He’s had his shoes shined, his shirt ironed and trousers pressed, but I think 2026 could be the year he finally gets his corsage.
Both men seem absolutely besotted with the idea of fighting for U.S. President Donald Trump at The White House. Unlike their previous scrapped dates, something tells me that a broken toe would not stop “The Notorious” from showing up for such a historic date. And it’s not just because of the political ramifications either — I think McGregor needs to fight now more than ever.
The past few years have been a public relations nightmare for the former UFC double champion. After losing a civil sexual assault case to Nikita Hand in November 2024, products linked to “The Notorious” were boycotted en masse across the U.K. and Ireland. In November, Irish reports claimed he had lost €7.7 million on his Forged Stout enterprises.
If the White House event does happen this summer, it'll be five years since we last saw him compete, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t dirtied his bib from a sporting point-of-view. In October of last year it was revealed that he accepted an 18-month retroactive ban due to him missing a number of drug tests in 2024.
Fighting is the catalyst for everything in McGregor’s empire. More than ever, he needs to generate positive headlines, and the best way for him to do that is to present himself for a fight week. 2026 will be the year that the phone Chandler has been white-knuckling since 2023 finally rings.
5. Jon Jones will come back and lose — which means we'll be stuck with him, as he won't be able to live with a loss
Mindenhall: This one is very specific, but I suspect it’s 100% accurate.
After the ridiculous year Jon Jones just had, in which he held the heavyweight belt hostage until late June when he abruptly retired, he will make his return in 2026. It will be an altered version of the Jones we remember, a larger, more lumbering mammal whose reflexes will have slowed considerably, possibly a symptom of the many vodka lunches from his time in Russia, allowing the playing field to catch up. The man who will catch him will be Alex Pereira, Jones’ sole fixation through his selective twilight years, when protecting his legacy became a moral imperative.
Here's the kicker, though. Once Jones loses, he will want to fight again ASAP. After all the reluctance and coaxing and endless negotiations of yesteryear, Jones will know that time is ticking down on him, and he’ll want to erase the first true loss on his record. This will become the new obsession. And here’s predicting that, because the hourglass is emptying so rapidly, we see Jones fight a second time in late 2026. Will it be a rematch with Pereira? Let’s just say that when I ask my magic eight-ball, it says “Chama,” so interpret that how you must.
6. UFC's White House event will be much weirder than we expect
Fowlkes: Right now in America we are living in, well, let’s just say interesting times. If we weren’t, there's no way we’d even be talking about doing a UFC event on the White House lawn, conveniently scheduled for the president’s 80th birthday. I know people are excited about this, expecting a big party with UFC fighters as guests of honor. But I’m telling you right now, it’s going to be much, much weirder than that. And it’s probably going to be uncomfortable and even comical at some points.
For one thing, Dana White has already confirmed they probably aren’t selling tickets to John Q. Fight Fan for this one. It’s going to be a bunch of billionaires and political elites, the vast majority of whom wouldn’t know a wrist-lock from a wristwatch. I mean, Kid Rock will probably be there. Maybe a podcaster or two, as long as they haven't uttered the words “Epstein list” into a microphone recently. But this will not be your usual crowd for your usual MMA event. It’ll be a bunch of phonies trying to front like they’re fight fans.
It's also going to be extremely Trump-focused. We know this. We’ve seen how regular old UFC broadcasts fawn over him. This one will no doubt crank up the dial on the Trump worship, because the UFC knows there is no such thing as too much butt-kissing for this man. If he isn’t awarded some manner of ceremonial UFC title belt at some point during the event, I’ll be stunned.
Certainly, a lot of UFC fans will be into this. Perhaps you, the person reading this story right now, are one of them. I think that’s pretty weird and pretty much makes you indistinguishable from the extras in “Gladiator” cheering for Emperor Commodus in the Roman Colosseum, but whatever. What I’m saying is, don’t go into this thinking UFC fighters are finally going to get the spotlight all to themselves for one unprecedented night before a vast national audience. They won’t. They’ll be the hired help here. And if they make the mistake of standing around in the wrong spot without their gloves on, don’t be surprised if some billionaire mistakes them for the valet and tosses them his car keys.
7. White House Event doesn’t even happen
Carroll: As much as Mr. Fowlkes forecasts all of my favorite things with regard to The White House event — political elites, billionaires and Kid Rock — I believe there is a chance the event doesn’t happen at all.
Before we get into the logistical issues of hosting an event on the front lawn of the house where the leader of the free world resides, let’s talk about the well-documented history of UFC not delivering on our most desired things for any given year.
What were the most desired fights of 2025? Tom Aspinall vs. Jon Jones — didn’t happen. What about the second-most anticipated fight of the same year? Islam Makhachev vs. Ilia Topuria. Guess what? Didn’t happen.
“Well, what about 2024?” you ask. Well, that was Aspinall vs. Jones too. And 2023? Ngannou vs. Jones.
What do all of these things have in common? That’s right, they all did not happen.
Don’t even get me started on Cowboy Stadium, Croke Park and other gargantuan stadiums that have been teased in the past.
The White House event is far and away the most anticipated combat sports event of 2026. Whether you detest the idea of it or think it’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever imagined, you’re going to watch the hell out of that event.
That said, this ain’t the T-Mobile Arena, lads. The Secret Service will be involved, federal security will have to be on hand; it’s a legitimate crowd control nightmare. There will be advanced security sweeps, to the point that even bringing broadcast infrastructure onto the premises presents its own headaches.
To add to that, the White House must be a functional space in the midst of an international crisis or a state of emergency. Obviously, nobody wants that to happen, but it’s not impossible.
Hey, you wanted a bold prediction, right? I’ll be glued to the television if it happens, but I won’t be shocked if it’s added to the list of UFC’s non-deliveries.
8. UFC gets cool again (Spike TV-style, bro)
Riggs: The ESPN era completely “sportified” UFC to the point of nausea. MMA is still barely a “real sport” at the highest level, but trying to force something as bizarre as the violent fisticuffs we hold so dearly just never felt right, and the pre-fight hype levels have never been the same since the Spike TV gladiator days. You know, the backstage black-and-white fighter interview clips, “Face the Pain” by Stemm — all the goofy glory that was UFC at its peak.
Most of that is probably going to continue to be left in the past, but because Paramount isn’t exclusively a sports network, I do believe this new era gives a much higher likelihood of better entertainment production. Maybe even more freedom, too. Despite Dana White being largely anti-fun when it comes to creative production, he's certainly started loosening up in recent years — for example, with the Noche UFC event series. Paramount will do what it does best: Give the UFC a much-needed facelift.
Category: General Sports
