As June wraps up, it means we have officially hit the halfway point of the year. Six months down, six months to go. And what a ride the first six months of the year have been in the UFC Octagon.The first year of the “Paramount Era” kicked off in January with Justin Gaethje defeating Paddy Pimblett to become interim lightweight champion in the UFC 324 main event. Five months later, Gaethje was backflipping off the top of the Octagon with the White House in the background as the new undisputed UFC lightweight champion. It’s been that kind of wild so far in 2026.
Great fights, great fighters, memorable moments and historic events have defined the first six months of UFC action. With that in mind, the CBS Sports combat sports experts sat down to look at six big things in the first six months of UFC action.
Let’s get into it.
The Fighter of the Year race may already be locked up
There’s still half of a year to go, but it feels like the Fighter of the Year crown can go on Gaethje’s mantle, right next to his UFC lightweight championship.
Gaethje kicked off the year — and UFC’s “Paramount Era” — with a thrashing of Paddy Pimblett to win the interim lightweight title in a very fun fight. The reaction to Gaethje’s UFC 324 win over Pimblett was that it was a great showing for Gaethje, but primarily that Pimblett was overrated and there was an attempt to rush him to a title fight before he’d been appropriately tested.
Fast forward to UFC Freedom 250 and Gaethje’s blood and guts win over elite pound-for-pound fighter Ilia Topuria to grab the undisputed championship and Gaethje is now on top of the world, finally holding the title he’d twice been unsuccessful in challenging for. Pimblett also got a boost from Gaethje’s performance against Topuria, showing how incredibly tough he is for surviving to the final bell against the same man who bashed Topuria’s face to a pulp.
It’s hard to imagine who is even in the running to catch Gaethje without some stunning second-half of-the-year performances. Sean Strickland picked up a great win over Khamzat Chimaev to become one of the sport’s least likely two-time champions, but he’d need another, equally impressive win to catch up to Gaethje. Josh Hokit is having a tremendous year, controversies aside, but he’s not fighting at a championship level currently, and his win over a disinterested-looking Derrick Lewis seems like it should barely count.
If anyone is even in the conversation with Gaethje at the end of the year, it will mean that person had one hell of a final six months. — Brent Brookhouse
Fight of the Year race is well underway
Recency bias often rears its head for End of the Year awards, but it’ll be tough to beat what 2026 has produced thus far.
The first high-profile entry came in March, when Josh Hokit and Curtis Blaydes inexplicably delivered the best heavyweight slugfest since Mark Hunt vs. Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva. The pair launched nearly 400 total strikes at each other over 15 minutes. Both men were transported to the hospital after bloodying and battering each other. The fight, which nobody expected to unravel so brutally, elevated the controversial Hokit from unranked to top five heavyweight.
It’s no surprise that Justin Gaethje is a frontrunner for Fight of the Year. CBS Sports has previously anointed him with the honor in 2017, 2018 and 2021. His memorable 2024 clash with Max Holloway also earned the UFC Honor Awards’ 2024 President’s Choice Fight of the Year.
Halfway through the year, his biggest competitor in the race, other than the aforementioned heavyweight fight, is himself. Gaethje kicked off the Paramount+ era with a thrilling five-round decision win over Paddy Pimblett to win the interim lightweight title. He arguably topped it five months later.
In June, Gaethje penned his magnum opus. Gaethje — more known for thrilling fights than winning championships — walked through the White House halls with very few believing he could dethrone Ilia Topuria, whom many deemed a pound-for-pound top fighter. The doubt was fair. Gaethje, 37, had twice failed to win the undisputed title. On the verge of retiring, his last shot at the elusive title was against a younger and presumably more skilled opponent.
The fight nearly played out as expected after a bone-crunching barrage of body strikes floored Gaethje. But the fan-favorite underdog overcame a gruelling Round 2, and proceeded to drop Topuria the very next frame. Topuria’s corner threw in the towel before the final round, after their fighter appeared to fracture both orbital bones. The still photo of Gaethje performing a backflip in front of the White House should be in the MMA Louvre. — Shakiel Mahjouri
Knockout of the Year debate already packs a punch
2026 has not yet produced a spectacular visual stoppage on par with Edson Barboza’s spinning wheel kick on Terry Etim, or Holloway’s 2024 buzzer-beater win over Gaethje. However, it has delivered one of the most visceral finishes in recent memory.
Alexa Grasso ostensibly finished Maycee Barber twice in one fight. The women’s flyweight contenders met in the co-main event of UFC Fight Night in Seattle. Grasso spun around and seated Barber with a picture-perfect one-two. The former champion landed one swift ground strike before snatching Barber’s neck like a Rottweiler. Barber was unconscious the moment Grasso locked in the rear-naked choke, concerningly so.
Barber was unconscious, eyes wide open, for at least one full minute as the referee and medical staff attended to her. The punches, not the submission, put her to sleep. Barber eventually came to and walked backstage with help from her team. The positive health update allowed everyone, Grasso included, to appreciate the quality of her work. The combination was beautiful, and the speed with which she seized the opportunity was incredible.
Grasso has other contenders nipping at her heels. 2026 was the year of left hooks. UFC light heavyweight champion Carlos Ulberg, Uros Medic, and Marcio Barbosa all scored memorable one-punch knockouts with that fundamental weapon.
There’s also Melquizael Costa, whose spinning back kick started a fight-ending sequence against Dan Ige. The TKO was especially significant because of who it beat. Ige had never been finished in 29 previous fights over 12 years. — Mahjouri
UFC’s trip to the White House was a smashing success
The politics and controversy surrounding a UFC event on the South Lawn of the White House are complex, and everyone is entitled to their opinion on whether the event should have happened and what it says about the current state of the country. What there is little debate about, however, is the success of the event itself when it comes to the action inside the Octagon.
Even the weather broke correctly for the event. After weeks of forecasts predicting severe heat, humidity, and most menacingly, thunderstorms, there were questions about whether the event would happen at all. There was a slight delay to the start of the fight as it appeared storms were about to hit. The storms never materialized, and the event went on as planned.
Seven fights, seven knockouts, a perfect storm of action, culminating in Gaethje’s scintillating upset of Topuria in one of the more memorable fights in recent years. It’s hard to imagine scripting things any better than how they worked out.
But the real icing on the cake for the event was the United States Marine Band performing live walkout music. A completely unique feature for a completely unique event, the band was almost as memorable as the knockouts and should be a feature UFC looks to reproduce in future “special events,” though it would be hard to match what the Marine Band was able to pull off. — Brookhouse
The Year of Upsets?
What made Gaethje’s win over Topuria so thrilling, in part, was how heavily the odds were against him. These last six months have spawned two of the 10 biggest upsets in UFC championship history. Khamzat Chimaev (-575) and Topuria (-500) were major betting favorites heading into their title defenses against Sean Strickland (+425) and Gaethje (+380). Both champions were conquered by older champions seemingly exiting their primes.
The youth vs. experience battle has been a recurring theme across many of this year’s events. Most UFC Fight Night main events have pitted established names against hungry, young contenders. Aljamain Sterling and Renato Moicano were among those who successfully pushed back the purported futures of their divisions.
Even the undercards have produced some juicy underdogs. Kevin Borjas cashed as a +600 underdog against Andre Lima, Tresean Gorre submitted -650 favorite Azamat Bekoev, and King Green rewound time against the younger Daniel Zellhuber (-360).
If this luck holds out through the year, it’s a good time to throw some darts. — Mahjouri
Divisions in need of championship stability
There are nine men who hold either full or interim UFC championships at the moment. Of those nine, only two (featherweight champ Alexander Volkanovski and heavyweight champ Tom Aspinall) have held their titles for more than one year. Those nine men have also combined for a total of two title defenses.
| Division | Champion | Held title since | Defenses |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Heavyweight |
Tom Aspinall |
June 21, 2025 |
0 |
|
Heavyweight (interim) |
Ciryl Gane |
June 14, 2026 |
0 |
|
Light heavyweight |
Carlos Ulberg |
April 11, 2026 |
0 |
|
Middleweight |
Sean Strickland |
May 9, 2026 |
0 |
|
Welterweight |
Islam Makhachev |
Nov. 15, 2025 |
0 |
|
Lightweight |
Justin Gaethje |
June 14, 2026 |
0 |
|
Featherweight |
Alexander Volkanovski |
April 12, 2025 |
1 |
|
Bantamweight |
Petr Yan |
Dec. 6, 2025 |
0 |
|
Flyweight |
Joshua Van |
Dec. 6, 2025 |
1 |
Between some champions jumping divisions and others simply being unable to fend off challengers, it feels like every division is starving for stability.
Merab Dvalishvili was bringing that stability to bantamweight, winning the title in September 2024 and successfully defending it three times in just over one year, but he may have pushed himself too hard with such a busy schedule, and Yan took the title off of him at the end of the year.
Aspinall is both still recovering from the double eye poke from Gane that has resulted in multiple surgeries and seemingly in a battle with UFC itself, putting him in a weird, undefined place. Gaethje has made no secret of the fact that he’s winding his career down. Volkanovski has proven seemingly ageless, but he’ll be 38 later this year and in the lower divisions, late-age success is rare.
But there are champions who could stabilize their division. Ulberg suffered an injury in winning the vacant belt against Jiri Prochazka, but we don’t know how high his ceiling truly is. Makhachev is arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, and if he gets more active, could pile up title defenses. And Van is a young fighter who is proving the hype to be real. A win over Alexandre Pantoja in a rematch could mark Van as a long-term champion.
The development of fighters and training in the modern era likely means the days of the lengthy reigns of former champions like Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones are in the past. But that doesn’t mean fighters can’t truly plant their flag in their division. — Brookhouse
