Predicting who will hold the UFC title in each division at the end of 2023

We’re doing our very best to predict the UFC title champions in each division to close out 2023.

We are fresh into 2023 and we’re already looking to the end of it. Damn, isn’t that just a sign of the times? The MMA times, that is, because we’re super geeked for this upcoming year of MMA goodness. We have Bellator debuting on CBS, the (hopeful) showdown between Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic, the farewell to Fedor Emelianenko, as well as having eyes on Kayla Harrison to see how she rebounds from her first career loss.

With all that going on, we’ve decided that the first thing we want to talk about this year is the end of it. Namely, who is going to be the top dogs in their divisions in the UFC? We already saw Israel Adesanya get dethroned from his impressive run as UFC middleweight champion to basically close out 2022, so what else can happen?

The light heavyweight division is in sorts of upheaval at the moment, after seeing three men hold the title since October of 2021, only for it now to currently sit without a champion to hold the title. A similar situation can be seen with the women’s strawweight division. Rose Namajunas started the year as champion, rocking Zhang Weili twice in 2021 to win and retain the belt. Then she lost it in a snore fest to Carla Esparza. Then Esparza lost it back to Weili. Are we going to get Weili vs. Namajunas three in 2023?

Who knows. What we do know is that predicting this chaos isn’t easy, and most of it is just shots in the dark, packed in by educated guesses and a lot of fandoms. We don’t know if these following men and women will hold the titles in their respective weight classes when the clock strikes midnight to start 2024, but we have hope that at least one of them will be right.

I mean, we have to do better than last year, right?