What do you need to know about new era of UFC? Jon Anik dishes on Paramount, 2026 storylines – The Athletic
UFC fans are used to change. Champions rise and fall. Fighting styles dominate and then get solved. Yet 2026 arrives with a more jarring kind of change — the removal of pay-per-view, a shift with the potential to significantly alter the draw of the sport.
When the UFC’s new media rights deal with Paramount was announced in August, the prices to watch were understandably the biggest thing fans cared about. Instead of paying for each headline event individually, fans are now considering whether to pay the monthly cost of a Paramount+ subscription, which includes UFC events.
For the trajectory of the mixed martial arts juggernaut, the move to CBS’ streaming service, which has about 80 million subscribers, was about far more than eliminating pay-per-view costs and reaching a larger audience. It was about bolstering the UFC in the pecking order of North American professional sports.
“This sport has built methodically since 1993 to this point in time, and we got a lot of mainstream traction in the United States, but we want to be in that big four,” Jon Anik, the UFC’s lead play-by-play commentator, told The Athletic, referring to the top men’s leagues of the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. “We want to take hockey’s place, and that’s our initiative over the next seven years, and if we’re not there already, I think we can get there.”
Dana White, president and CEO of the UFC, has been with the promotion since 2001. (Photo: Jeff Bottari / Zuffa LLC)
Ahead of the company’s first event on Paramount+ with Saturday’s UFC 324, here’s everything you need to know about the new mixed martial arts era, plus some questions and answers with Anik about his sky-high expectations for 2026.
Details of the UFC’s deal with Paramount
The UFC signed a seven-year, $7.7 billion media-rights deal with Paramount in August. All numbered UFC events and UFC Fight Nights will be broadcast on Paramount+, while certain UFC numbered events will be broadcast more broadly on CBS.
In 2026, there will be 13 numbered events — the major events that used to be sold as pay-per-views. In recent years, the promotion has typically held its lesser-heralded Fight Night events at least twice per month, averaging about 42 events per year since 2016.
The deal with Paramount follows the UFC’s partnership with ESPN, which was originally inked in 2018. That contract was then valued at $1.5 billion for five years, and called for 30 events per year across ESPN platforms. UFC and ESPN agreed to an extension in 2019 that also made pay-per-views exclusively available on ESPN, with users required to sign up for ESPN+.
In 2018, UFC fans in the United States paid $64.99 per PPV. On Dec. 6, the final PPV on ESPN, U.S. fans paid $79.99.
Light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira is considered one of the sport’s most marketable stars entering 2026. (Photo: Alexandre Schneider / Getty Images For Paramount+)
Start times are also changing
A change to numbered events that East Coast fans will love to hear is that the main cards will now begin at 9 p.m. ET, an hour earlier than before. Fans have complained for years about often having to wait until after 1 a.m. for the main event to start.
While Paramount already announced there will be 43 total UFC events in 2026, the frequency of those events could change. Just seven days after UFC 324, the promotion will broadcast from the other side of the world in Australia for UFC 325 on Jan. 31. UFC 326 is slated for March 7.
In regard to production value, Anik said 10 days out from the event that he was still not yet privy to the television format, but that fans could expect some enhanced graphic packages, new music and “added bells and whistles.” That will include new personalities joining the broadcast, including Kate Scott, who will host the broadcast and post-fight show.
The UFC champions entering 2026
There were 21 undisputed title fights in 2025 across the promotion’s 12 divisions, but just one champion — Valentina Shevchenko at women’s flyweight — retained her belt through the entire year. As 2026 begins, here’s the current title picture.
Men’s Heavyweight: Tom Aspinall
Men’s Light heavyweight: Alex Pereira
Men’s Middleweight: Khamzat Chimaev
Men’s Welterweight: Islam Makhachev
Men’s Lightweight: Ilia Topuria (Paddy Pimblett and Justin Gaethje will face for the division’s interim belt at UFC 324)
Men’s Featherweight: Alexander Volkanovski
Men’s Bantamweight: Petr Yan
Men’s Flyweight: Joshua Van
Women’s strawweight: Mackenzie Dern
Women’s flyweight: Shevchenko
Women’s bantamweight: Kayla Harrison
In an interview, Anik described UFC’s ambitions for 2026 as aggressive.
Note: Questions and answers slightly edited for length and clarity.
Jon Anik, Joe Rogan and Daniel Cormier at UFC 323, the promotion’s final PPV with ESPN. (Photo: Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
How does the potential of reaching new fans change the way you prepare for an event? What do you think will get those fans to finally tune in?
Being a combat sports fan in the United States of America has been expensive. There was a time when I was a kid, as a formative combat sports fan, trying to figure out a way to put $40 or $50 together to pay for a pay-per-view. … Whatever age you may be, it is now, after half a century, finally affordable to be a combat sports fan again, and that’s hugely exciting.
We do believe we’re going to reach a wider audience. The fan base can turn over quickly. We saw a huge swell during COVID when we were the only show in town. We’re coming out of the gates with two numbered events on the 24th and the 31st, and I think when people see this live for the first time, they’ll understand what the hype is about.
Beyond just the move away from the PPV model, what about this new era should be most exciting to the younger generation of fans the promotion is trying to reach?
In terms of the athletes and our ability to humanize these athletes, we’ve never had a better group of fighters whose stories we can tell. I think sometimes it sounds hyperbolic when I say, “He’s the greatest of all time,” and maybe he’s in the middle of his career, but this sport is still in its relative infancy, and a lot of the athletes right now that you are seeing are the best in the world, because mixed martial arts is evolving right now before our very eyes.
What drew me to this sport was the unpredictable theater, and I’m not sure that any sport can lay claim to the unpredictable theater quite like mixed martial arts. And now we have a platform that will allow a lot more people to see it without it affecting the food they’re putting on the table.
Does this kind of change reinvigorate you? And how has the Paramount news made you reflect on the history of the sport?
This is just a totally different product than it was even when I joined the company in 2011. Even the bottom feeders on the roster, for lack of a better way to put it, are all high-level athletes, and that wasn’t always necessarily the case. … As a TV product, aesthetically, our sport delivers as consistently as any.
When I left ESPN in 2011 and signed a contract with the UFC, I thought they were going to be on G4, the gaming network, but I didn’t care. That was the wagon upon which I wanted to hitch my career. Now we’ve gone from FOX to ESPN and to Paramount+, checking another major box on the American television landscape, and that’s hugely exciting for all of us.
I feel like there are 14 Super Bowls a year, man. The one the NFL does, and the 13 that we do.
Throughout the UFC, who are some of the champions you are most excited to see build on their legacies in 2026?
I’m really curious to see if Petr Yan and Khamzat Chimaev can piggyback upon what I believe were the two most dominant, best singular performances of 2025.
The only thing working against Chimaev is that he has been a little bit inactive, but he’s the most electrifying force in the game. If I had a big fight card like at the White House, the Sphere in Las Vegas, my first call would be Chimaev. When he ducks down into a squat before he competes, I’m anxious. I am nervous. I am excited. It is tense. There’s nothing like a Khamzat Chimaev fight.
Then, I’m fascinated to see what Merab Dvalishvili, the consensus 2025 fighter of the year, can do against Petr Yan, because if Yan can do 80 percent of what he did in beating Merab, I don’t think Merab can close that gap.
I’m really curious now with this Kayla Harrison (injury) news. What does that mean for Amanda Nunes? Are they gonna hold her out for six or eight or ten months now? Would Valentina Shevchenko be in the mix at 135, given what she’s done at 125?
And then, of course, when it comes to Tom Aspinall, what is the relative health of his eye? Would they hold him out for the White House? Just how good is he?
