Good news, everyone: Current UFC champions boast skill and youth over age and experience.

It’s a movement the promotion desperately needs. With mega stars Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey out for the time being—and potentially forever—the UFC needs new faces to lead the way.

Enter our current crop of titleholders.

Young champs Max Holloway, 25, and Cody Garbrandt, 26, recently took the MMA world by storm, rapidly improving their respective skill sets and dispatching long-reigning champions with relative ease.

Each fighter put on a star-making, breakout performance in his bid to win the title—Holloway in his TKO victory against Jose Aldo at UFC 212 in June and Garbrandt in his decision win against Dominick Cruz at UFC 207 in December 2016.

While both fighters lost a round and had their moments of discomfort, they mostly manhandled their opposition, definitively proving themselves the best in their weight class.

Add into this mix Robert Whittaker, 26, who just won the interim UFC middleweight title with his best performance to date, a unanimous decision victory over Yoel Romero at UFC 213.

In the fight, Whittaker battled back from both injury and a slow start to impose his game plan.

Flustering Romero with his pinpoint, powerful striking attack, Whittaker took three out of five rounds on all the judges’ scorecards, earning a solid-gold belt for his efforts. While the win wasn’t as one-sided as those from Holloway and Garbrandt, Whittaker’s left no doubt. He was the better man inside the cage.  

Now, Whittaker turns his attention to Michael Bisping, the current middleweight champion holding the “official” belt. Whittaker will need to topple the Brit to claim undisputed status, something many fans feel he will achieve.

One division north, another king-in-waiting lurks. Jon Jones, the former light heavyweight champ and debatably the pound-for-pound GOAT, faces current 205-pound titleholder Daniel Cormier July 29 at UFC 214.

Cormier, 38, is the second oldest champion in the UFC, trailing only Bisping by a few weeks. Should Jones topple Cormier—again—the light heavyweight division will see a massive swing of age at the top, as Jones is almost a decade younger at 29.

Setting the scope to the entirety of the UFC, youth reigns like never before. Six out of 10 champions are 30 or younger—a number that inflates to eight out of 10 if you replace Cormier with Jones and Bisping with Whittaker.

Only Tyron Woodley (35) and Stipe Miocic (34) are comfortably past the three-decade mark.



Making this a massive win for the UFC, the young champions are all marketable in different ways—Holloway the fearless Hawaiian, Garbrandt the sharp-dressed, tattooed All-American Ohioan, Amanda Nunes, a Brazilian, the sport’s first openly gay champion.

Jones is an African American and potentially the greatest fighter of all time. He carries the weight of past slip ups into every bout, an all-time great redemption story waiting to be written.

McGregor still rules the lightweight division. His appeal, beginning with his fervent Irish following and spreading to nearly all corners of the globe, is unmatched.

Whittaker is the sport’s first Australian champion. He too will carry the support of a nation. In fact, he’ll represent two, as he was born in New Zealand but lives and trains in Australia.

Joanna Jedrzejczyk represents Poland but is universally loved. She’s ferocious and intimidating, a 115-pound buzzsaw ripping her way through the strawweight woodshed. She’s unstoppable.

Even Miocic and Woodley—the old guys in the equation—are easy to love. Miocic still holds his full-time job as a firefighter, and his humor and wit is surpassed only by his ability to put fist to face. The dude is hilarious and relatable, a gigantic badass who probably still swings on monkey bars from time to time. What’s not to like?  


(Credit: Jason Silva-USA TODAY Sports) 

Woodley, meanwhile, is the traditional super athlete. The NCAA Division I All-American wrestler owns possibly the most devastating right hand in the game, and he supplements his physical talents with a healthy dose of the mental game as well.

As a Fox analyst, Woodley frequently works the desk on fight night, breaking down fights, analyzing fighters, and getting screen time in front of a massive national audience.

That leaves one champ: Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson. The flyweight division has never known another ruler. Since its inception, Johnson outpaced them all.

He’s the most successful champ on the roster, and he can break Anderson Silva’s record of consecutive title defenses in his next outing. Currently, he’s won 12 straight—finishing six of them—and he only gets better every time out.

He is potentially the greatest fighter of all time.

And yet...he’s the perfect example of the UFC’s responsibility in all this.

Despite his success, Johnson is relatively unknown to the mainstream audience. Even hardcores would probably have trouble recounting his entire run as champion.

Remember the Chris Cariaso fight? I’m not mad if you don’t.

While the pieces have never been set up quite like this, it’s still the UFC’s responsibility to put the puzzle together. Literally every champ is uniquely marketable—and most of them have quite a while left at the top barring any unforeseen setbacks.

The stage is set. The stars are here.

We’re ready for a show.