As is usually the case, the only thing that’s truly predictable in MMA is the unpredictable. The year 2024 was no different. There were plenty of surprises in store for us, things that caught us completely off guard. And we’re not talking merely in the sportsbook sense of underdogs shocking the world.
We’re talking about things we never saw coming. Things out of left field. Feats that might’ve seemed next to impossible back in January.
Here are the biggest surprises in MMA in 2024.
Dana’s yearlong love fest of Jon Jones
This was an odd development, if only because Jon Jones has probably cost the UFC more money than anybody outside of Cung Le. Over the course of his career, Jones has been stripped of titles, booted out of Vegas, suspended for big portions of the UFC’s calendar, and pried out from under boxing rings after the drug agents left. He even sunk UFC 151 when he refused to fight Chael Sonnen on short notice.
Well, his team did. Those sport killers. Still one of the “goofiest” decisions ever made.
Yet throughout 2024, no matter if it was Tom Aspinall winning the interim heavyweight title or Alex Pereira stepping in on short notice to save a major event, White has been going out on his proverbial shield when it comes to defending Jones to the media, insisting that he’s not only MMA’s GOAT but also the reigning, omnipresent pound-for-pound king. He got so upset with seeing Jones slip below the likes of Islam Makhachev in the UFC’s own pound-for-pound rankings that he expressed interest in instituting a new rankings system using AI.
It is true that Jones lived up to billing by easily beating Stipe Miocic at UFC 309, but to hear Dana gush over his prized fighter — who has fought just three times in five years — when he could have been plugging the likes of Pereira and Aspinall with all kinds of fun hyperbole was … unexpected.
Alex Pereira’s takeover of the sport
Coming out of 2023, there were already blurbs like this being written about Pereira’s wild ride from losing his middleweight title to winning the light heavyweight title all within the space of six months. The word “meteoric” couldn’t begin to describe that kind of trajectory.
Yet cut forward to the end of 2024 and astonishment is the norm. It wasn’t that Pereira went 3-0 in 2024, with three finishes to retain his title. It was that he stepped into ridiculous spots in less-than-ideal situations — situations that have ruined whimsical fighters in the past — and flourished anyway.
UFC 300 couldn’t find that mind-blowing headliner to distinguish it as a gala affair? Plug Pereira in there against Jamahal Hill and watch the masses swoon. Conor McGregor can’t keep his UFC 303 appointment against Michael Chandler due to a broken toe? Call Pereira, who was willing to travel across the globe and fight through his own broken toe to knock Prochazka out for the second time in seven months. Don’t have a headliner for a swiftly approaching Salt Lake City card? Ping Pereira, who merrily divested of Khalil Rountree like it was nothing more than a favor.
Now Pereira is the most popular champion on the UFC’s roster. Who could have seen this coming?
Holloway stealing the moment of the year
Listen, was Holloway gambling by taking on Justin Gaethje at lightweight right at the moment when a path back to the featherweight title was finally presenting itself? Hell yes he was. People said he was too small for it. They remembered him getting overmatched by Dustin Poirier in his cameo at 155, and clammed up when thinking about what that would mean against a slurry lucid maniac like Gaethje.
So when he bounced his knuckle off Gaethje’s chin for more than 24 minutes, shattering his nose with a kick and hurting him on several occasions to essentially tame Gaethje’s wildest instincts, it was already eye-popping enough. He was the BMF. Yet when he pointed to the ground in the waning moments and invited Gaethje to step in his wheelhouse to give him his worst? When he rolled out his own chin like a red carpet, to say come get it? When he hit Gaethje with that right hand that dropped him in a lifeless heap with a second left?
GTFO. We may never see anything like that again.
Diego Lopes’ rapid ascension
A year ago, Diego Lopes finished Pat Sabatini to raise his Octagon record to 2-1. A nice little start to a UFC career. Yet a year later he is perhaps the hottest featherweight outside of Ilia Topuria, and one of the contenders who will be in prime position to overthrow him in 2025.
The Diego experience has been a thrill ride of the most ridiculous kind. He finished Sodiq Yusuff in 90 seconds, which was meant to be the steep test to see where things stood. But for him to accept an opponent switch from Brian Ortega to Dan Ige just a few hours before he made the walk at UFC 303? At a catchweight of 165 pounds, which is a full 20 pounds higher than he normally competes, and at least a couple of pounds higher than he walks around at? To win that fight in the way he always does? In a fantastic sweep of warrior bangs and mulletry pace, pressure and Mexican menace?
Wild. Wild, wild, wild.
We were already hitting the icon decibel levels by the time he finally got Ortega at the Sphere, and he beat Ortega convincingly too. This man is a revelation.
Speaking of Dan Ige…
That was some wild sh*t he pulled by volunteering to fight Lopes at UFC 303. Volunteering to step in and fight on a few hours’ notice shows, A) that he keeps himself ready to compete at all times, B) he has stones the size of candlepin bowling balls, and C) he’s about as gangster as they come, because it also confounded the viewing audience.
Because … like … how was this allowed? Aren’t there protocols? How was Ige permitted to weigh in backstage on the night of? We can just throw dudes in the Octagon at a moment’s notice? That image of Marc Ratner moving the index finger across the dial on the scale for Ige is when it got all too real. Or at least we think it was. The whole thing still feels very much like a dream.
An event held at the world famous Sphere
Everyone said it couldn’t be done. They said Dana was crazy to even consider it. Holding a fight card at the Sphere? Where U2 was staging psychedelic experiences for fiftysomethings to blow their minds and thousands of American dollars? This was the fight game’s version of NASA landing on the moon.
Yet Dana did it to the cool thrum of $17 million and change. He showed the world.
(Actually, the surprising thing about this card was that it an homage to Mexican Independence Day and it featured a kissing Georgian lunatic and a dude from Phoenix with facial tattoos).
Dustin Poirier’s victory over Benoit Saint Denis
This is an honorary shout. Poirier was forced to face a younger, stronger killer in the ranks at UFC 299 because he was in that twilit no man’s land where matchmakers feed former contenders to the lions.
And it looked like that was how it was going to play out, too. Poirier had to survive every layer of hell as BSD slammed away at his face and body with a kind of ruthless entitlement. Poirier wobbled and swayed and a couple of times wheezed blood, but in the second round he showed us what we already knew: That you’re going to have to kill him. He returned fire and … what’s this? … he hurt Saint Denis! In a sequence that will tell you everything you need to know about Poirier’s heart and how deep he’s willing to dig in a fight, Poirier turned the tables and knocked out the French tyrant.
That earned him a title shot, which in itself was one of the big surprises of 2024.
Belal Muhammad becomes a champion
Belal Muhammad could have easily given himself the nickname “Forever Behind the Eight Ball” rather than “Remember the Name,” because there was a time when a title shot felt destined to never happen. Yet he got it in 2024, and it finally arrived against his old foe Leon Edwards.
Now, because Leon had dismantled Kamaru Usman and appeared to be in the best form of his life, this fight didn’t look like Belal’s on paper. In their previous meeting three years prior, Edwards was in firm control of the fight before an accidental eye-poke ended things prematurely. And the idea of Belal having to fight in England — in what was to be Leon’s homecoming fight — didn’t bode well, either.
So what did Belal do? He took the fight to Edwards. He dropped him to the canvas and controlled the action. He bullied him, battered him, and at times out-struck him. Belal looked like a machine that could go all day, and in the end it was him getting the gold wrapped around his waist. That fight goes a little unsung, but it was quietly one of the greatest performances of the year.
PFL bungling the Bellator merger
Hey man, we all were willing to be optimistic last November when the PFL purchased Strikeforce. We listened intently as Donn Davis laid out a plan that would include a PFL season (as usual), a Bellator calendar, and some fun superfights strewn in. All the fighters would be made whole. And with Jake Paul and Francis Ngannou involved on various levels, there was some real – yet cautious — excitement in the air.
Yet a year later, many of those Bellator fighters who were inherited in the merger are grousing publicly about the lack of fights. Some, like Patricio Pitbull, have very politely asked to be released. What looked optimistic now feels like doom. We did get that one supercard that featured Ngannou and Cris Cyborg vs. Larissa Pacheco out in Saudi Arabia, but for the most part we’re all waiting for the thing to kick into gear. To get rolling for real. Or for Bellator to die.
Or for the whole thing to go up in flames. Crazy how much difference a year makes.
Dakota Ditcheva though…
At least the PFL has her! Ditcheva is a star in the making. If the PFL can uncover 10 more Ditchevas, then we’ll be talking.
Kayla actually makes 135 pounds, not once but twice
The idea of Kayla Harrison coming into the UFC and destroying the lot at 135 pounds was never in question. What everyone wanted to know was, could a former lightweight whittle her frame down to 135 pounds? And what on God’s green earth would that look like?
When she made the weight for her bout with Holly Holm, it was as though she’d already won the fight within the fight. Did she look sunken in? Of course. She looked like a yogi who’d retracted herself through fasting. But come fight night she looked like the juggernaut we thought she could be, rag-dolling Holm before submitting her in the second round.
Then she made weight against Ketlen Vieira for UFC 307, which shows some real mettle. There’s really only one more cut she needs to make before she can look at a plate of fettuccini again, and that’s for her title fight with Julianna Peña. What happens if she wins the bantamweight title? That remains to be seen.
But that she made bantamweight at all was a marvel in 2024.
