Ranking the UFC's Best Fights of the Year for 2023

2023 was quite a year for MMA.

We watched Francis Ngannou leave the UFC, sign with the PFL, and score a blockbuster boxing match with Tyson Fury. We saw Jon Jones, arguably the greatest fighter of all time, return from a years long hiatus to become a two-division champion. ONE Championship finally came to the USA. After months of rumours and speculation, the PFL actually bought Bellator. The MMA landscape is a tectonically different place than it was this time last year.

We also got some really, really good fights. As is always the case, many of the best fights of the year were in the UFC's Octagon, where the bulk of the sport's top talent still resides. The world-class fighters on the promotion's roster produced some legitimate classics that we'll probably still be talking about into the next decade.

Scroll on for our five favourites.

Irene Aldana and Karol Rosa co-starred in one of the most entertaining UFC fights of the year, and the best of those that occurred in the promotion's women's divisions. The fact that it occurred less than a week ago is inconsequential, so there better not be any accusations of recency bias!

Mexico's Aldana and Brazil's Rosa met on the undercard of last Saturday's stacked UFC 296 in Las Vegas. It was a high-stakes fight for both women. For Aldana, it was a chance to rebound from a failed bid to swipe the bantamweight title from the retiring Amanda Nunes and to defend her No. 5 spot in the bantamweight rankings. For the ninth-ranked Rosa, it was a chance to vault into the Top 5, where a title shot likely would have been just one more win away.

Both fought like they knew what the bout meant for their careers. Throughout their three-round encounter, which was contested entirely on the feet, they threw almost 700 combined strikes, and landed nearly half of them, according to UFCStats.com.

In terms of hard numbers, Rosa landed 204 significant strikes, and Aldana landed 145. That's a lot of punishment for 15 minutes.

While Aldana was out-landed through the fight as a whole, and also round-by-round, she landed the much harder punches, and by the time the fight was ending, had painted her foe's face red with blood. That was presumably why the judges gave the Mexican puncher a unanimous decision win.

Rosa may not have liked that result, but the blow was surely softened by the $50,000 Fight of the Night bonus checks she and Aldana received.

Kazakhstan's Shavkat Rakhmonov was one of the fastest-rising fighters of the year. In fact, he could be looking at a welterweight title shot in 2024, depending on the UFC's plans for the champion Leon Edwards.

One of the biggest components of Rakhmonov's ascent into title contention was a March scrap with Geoff Neal. The Kazakh was 15-0 at the time, and having recently beat the brakes off top-15 mainstay Neil Magny, was ready for another step up.

As far as the rankings were concerned, Neal was exactly that, but Rakhmonov was on such a hot streak at the time that he entered the Octagon as a huge betting favourite.

In the end, Neal gave Rakhmonov all he could handle. The American ate everything that came his way and returned fire with more success than anybody the Kazakh had met in the Octagon to that point. In fact, Neal helped reveal one of the many traits that make Rakhmonov such a force in MMA: a granite chin.

It would have been a treat if their fight had gone three full rounds, but Rakhmonov ultimately put a pretty nice bow on it, scoring one of the best submissions of the year with a standing rear-naked choke in the final minute of the third round.

After coming up short in a lightweight title fight with Charles Oliveira to close out 2022, Justin Gaethje needed to make a big statement in his first of 2023.

He couldn't have asked for a better dance partner than Rafael Fiziev.

Gaethje and Fiziev met on the main card of UFC 286 in March. While Gaethje was on a mission to rebound from his loss to Oliveira, it was Fiziev's opportunity to assert himself as a legitimate title contender.

Ahead of the fight, the Kyrgyz fighter, who has spent years training among the best strikers in the world in Thailand, was expected to have the upper hand on the feet. Gaethje, in contrast, seemed best advised to use his wrestling, as he seemed to have a big advantage on the mat.

In the end, Gaethje didn't spend much time looking for takedowns. Instead, the former interim champion happily engaged Fiziev in a wild slugfest, and after three rounds that saw him out-land the rising contender by a 106-97 margin, walked away with a narrow unanimous decision.

Later in the night, to nobody's surprise, both men received $50,000 Fight of the Night bonus checks.

It's still crazy to imagine that, not all that long ago, the UFC was considering dropping its men's flyweight division. Imagine all the legendary fights we would have missed out on if that happened.

One of the latest such fights involved Mexico's Brandon Moreno and Brazil's Alexandre Pantoja.

The pair met in the co-main event of UFC 290 in July. At the time, Moreno was the defending champion, and a moderate favourite to leave the Octagon with the title. However, he had lost to Pantoja once before, suffering a decision defeat in 2018, and twice if you count a submission loss on The Ultimate Fighter in 2016. Based on that history, there were plenty of people backing the Brazilian, too.

In the end, the pair engaged in one of the most competitive contests of the year.

Over the course of their 25-minute war, Moreno out-landed Pantoja by a slight 167-161 margin, and completed two of four takedown attempts to control just over four minutes of action on the mat. Pantoja, meanwhile, succeeded on six of eleven takedown attempts, and had 8:26 of control time on the mat. The two threw everything they had at each other, and like most flyweights, did it all with blinding speed and impeccable technique.

The judges ultimately gave the decision—and the title—to Pantoja, but all signs point to another meeting between these two great flyweights in the near future, most likely with the belt once again on the line.

If you're ever trying to decide which fights to show a new MMA fan, make sure to add Islam Makhachev and Alexander Volkanovski's February 2023 showdown to the list. It wasn't just one of the best fights of the year, but one of the best fights ever.

Even weeks out from fight night, Makhachev and Volkanovski's UFC 284 matchup had the luster of something truly special.

Makhachev had recently claimed the lightweight title with an effortless submission win over living legend in Charles Oliveira, and with 11 straight wins behind him, was drawing frequent and justified comparisons to his undefeated mentor Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Volkanovski, meanwhile, was considered the sport's top pound-for-pound talent, and after four impressive featherweight title defenses, had been granted the opportunity to challenge the much larger Makhachev for a second belt. The fact that he was getting the opportunity on home soil in Australia only added to the stakes.

In terms of the technical details of the matchup, the overwhelming consensus was that Makhachev, arguably the best grappler in MMA right now, needed to get the fight to the ground. Volkanovski, on the other hand, was expected to have an advantage on the feet, despite being the shorter fighter.

In the end, the pair contradicted all expectations. In the opening round, Makhachev hurt Volkanovski with a punch, and continued to land on the feet throughout the fight. And while Volkanovski was taken down four times, he denied five of Makhachev's attempts, and controlled a meaningful portion of the bout with his own grappling. He even finished the fight on top, raining down strikes. Both men showed extreme proficiency in every aspect of the MMA toolkit, and no fear of the other's perceived strengths.

The decision ultimately went to Makhachev, but the fight was so competitive that the Australian remained the UFC's pound-for-pound king in the aftermath–at least, until he was knocked out by Makhachev in their short-notice October rematch, but that's neither here nor there.

We're here to talk about their first fight, and there's no debating its status as a modern masterpiece of MMA.