We’re in the final days of downtime from the UFC – our near month-long wait between events is going to end this Saturday, when the world’s largest MMA organization debuts on ABC. It’s been a long few weeks without fights, and I can’t wait to see what 2021 is going to hold.

Not that I don’t have a few guesses. With the schedule for the next few months mostly set, and a few other big fights coming down the pipe, it’s time to start making predictions. Here are five big ones of my own for the upcoming year:

Israel Adesanya will end the year with a powerful GOAT case

With his record now sitting at a perfect 20-0, the UFC middleweight champion is already building his resume as one of the most remarkable talents we’ve ever seen in the sport of mixed martial arts. I’ve long considered him the heir apparent to Anderson Silva: now the holder of the title Silva dominated for so many years, Adesanya has that same quality of pure specialness that Silva had in his prime. He’s impossible to recreate. He’s impossible to emulate. He simply does things no other person can do.

Still 31 years old, Adesanya still has quite a few years yet to put a permanent stamp on the middleweight division. But, evidently, his ambitions are bigger than that. In March, Adesanya will move up to 205 pounds for the first time in his career, challenging new light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz for his belt in a fight with significant legacy implications.

Not only do I think Adesanya is going to emerge from the fray as a double champion, I think his status in the GOAT conversation – still nascent – will rise tremendously by the end of 2021. Becoming a double champ will be a start, and it’s not going to be easy. The jump from middleweight to light heavyweight is 20 pounds, one of the biggest in the sport, and Adesanya is a relatively skinny guy. Blachowicz will be the biggest and most physically powerful fighter he’s ever shared the ring with.

But that didn’t faze Silva, who had a very successful foray up 20 pounds during his middleweight title run. In between trashing the 185-pound division, Silva vacationed three times at light heavyweight, and the weight difference didn’t affect him much. None of his three opponents – James Irvin, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar – escaped the first round. In fact, the performance against Griffin, who was only one fight removed from holding the light heavyweight title, is still one of the most astonishing in the history of the sport. I have little doubt that if Silva was serious about pursuing it, he would have been a two-division champ himself.

Silva showed that his skill and fighting style translated against bigger fighters, and Adesanya – whose style and talents are reminiscent of Silva’s – is both taller and longer than Silva was. Adesanya’s 6-foot-4 frame and 80-inch reach are closer to Jon Jones than they are any other middleweight. When he steps into the ring with Blachowicz, he’ll be two inches taller and have a two-inch reach advantage. He won’t look small. Blachowicz has the pure power to knock anyone silly, but you have to hit Adesanya to do that. I don’t think his slight frame will hold him back at 205, and there’s almost no one at either division who can match his skill.

A win would make Adesanya the fifth UFC fighter ever to hold two belts simultaneously, joining Conor McGregor, Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes and Henry Cejudo. Of the four, Nunes is the only one to make a real, honest run at defending the two belts simultaneously. Adesanya would be the first double champion to attain that status while still undefeated. And if last year’s any indication – he defended his middleweight title against Yoel Romero in early March before returning to knock out Paulo Costa in September – there should be plenty of time for Izzy to win the light heavyweight belt and then return to 185 to beat Robert Whittaker again.

Put all that together, and you have a burgeoning case for the greatest of all time. And the best part: he’ll still have so much left to do.

Khabib Nurmagomedov will stay retired

Speaking of undefeated champions with a eye on the title of GOAT, let’s talk Khabib. Two and a half months after the greatest lightweight to ever live tapped out Justin Gaethje with a second-round triangle choke and announced his retirement in the Octagon, Khabib Nurmagomedov is still officially the UFC lightweight champion and the organization’s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter.

Khabib has since insisted that he has no desire to return to the Octagon – unless, perhaps, the UFC ponied up a boatload of cash for a fight with Georges St-Pierre. He’s back home in Dagestan, with his family, enjoying the quiet life. But UFC president Dana White has continued to insist, despite any evidence to the contrary, that he’s going to convince Khabib to fight again. It’s why he’s refused to vacate the lightweight title, and he’s refused to name the upcoming Conor McGregor-Dustin Poirier rematch a championship fight.

Imagine that, Dana White NOT in a hurry to put a belt on Conor. But he might as well – I genuinely don’t expect Khabib to ever fight again, or at the very least, not for quite a long time yet. Khabib’s retirement felt different than most other MMA retirements: it was made for genuine, personal reasons. His father, the guiding light of his career, is gone. He wants to spend more time with the family he has left. This wasn’t Conor “retiring” as a negotiating tactic.

White can say all he wants about getting Khabib back in the cage, but history has shown that he isn’t always as good of a negotiator as he’d like to think he is. I don’t think Khabib will budge, and at some point in 2021, the UFC is going to have to figure out something to do with its lightweight title.

Jon Jones‘ heavyweight expedition won’t go as planned

Although his next fight hasn’t been scheduled or announced, at some point in 2021 we can expect former light heavyweight champion Jon Jones to finally make his debut at heavyweight, after many years of teasing a move up from 205 pounds. Arguably the greatest and most dominant mixed martial artist in history, Jones is looking to secure his legacy by joining the ranks of two-division champions.

Jones was first linked to a move to heavyweight years ago, in his untouchable prime. But he’s choosing to make the move now, after a decade at the top, significant personal and legal problems, and two of the closest fights of his career. Jones is still one of the world’s pound-for-pound greats – that will remain true until someone beats him – but the seemingly impossible competition gap between him and the rest of the world looked like it was starting to disappear during his final fights at 205.

In July 2019, Jones dropped the first judge’s scorecard of his career in a split decision win over Thiago Santos, who fought his heart out despite suffering a debilitating knee injury early on. Although the consensus media scorecard was 48-47 Jones, a significant minority believed Santos was the deserving winner. Then, in February, Dominick Reyes took the fight to the champion over the first three rounds, setting a pace that Jones seemingly couldn’t match. Jones’ unanimous decision victory was extremely controversial – most, including myself, thought Reyes deserved the nod.

Neither Santos or Reyes have covered themselves in glory since, but on those days, they were right there with the champion. It was the kind of competition the champion had only seen once before: his epic first fight with Alexander Gustafsson, a fighter seemingly grown in a lab to provide a match for Jones’ strengths, in 2013. But if the rest of the field is starting to catch up with Jones, why would we think it’ll be different at heavyweight?

The talent pool at heavyweight is smaller than light heavyweight, for sure. But as he ages, Jones’ one signature advantage, his freakish reach, won’t be such an advantage anymore. Jones has only fought one opponent with an 80-inch reach in his career – Ovince Saint Preux in 2016 – but most of the best heavyweights in the world have reaches over 80. His physical dimensions won’t be quite as outlandish at his new division. And there’s the matter of his mission to significantly bulk up for heavyweight – not only could the added size cost him valuable explosion and quickness as he gets older, he still seemingly would stand little chance to be as strong as Stipe Miocic or Francis Ngannou regardless.

Heavyweight could always use contenders, and Jones’ move up is a welcome development. We’ve been speculating for years how it would go, and now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road. And doubting Jon Jones has never gone well for anyone. But I have trouble seeing Jones being the same sort of force at heavyweight that he was at light heavyweight, especially considering the trajectory of his career. We don’t know where he’s going to start yet, but I have a feeling it won’t proceed as he envisioned.

This year’s breakout star: Giga Chikadze

It was thrilling to watch the rise of Khamzat Chimaev and Kevin Holland over the course of 2020. The two talented young fighters were an easy No. 1 and 2 in any rankings of the Breakthrough Fighter of the Year, owing to their comparatively little-known status at the beginning of the 2020, and the special qualities they put on display – Chimaev’s overpowering dominance and Holland’s high-wattage, trash-talking flair.

Chimaev and Holland went from no-names to main-eventers over the last 365 days. That kind of breakthrough is rare to see. But when trying to project who else could make that kind of jump in 2021, one name came to mind: the thumping Georgian kickboxer Giga Chikadze, who could be one of the next big things at 145 pounds.

Holland set a UFC record with five Octagon victories inside the calendar year 2020, but Chikadze wasn’t far behind. The 32-year-old went 4-0 in the UFC last year, bringing his career record to 5-0 since signing with the promotion in 2019. To be compared to a Holland or a Chimaev, you have to have an appealing style and a willingness to stay busy. Those two rocketed to the top not only because they won, but because they got their foot in the door as many times as they could.

Chikadze looks like he has those same qualities. He’s taken fights on short notice and on quick turnarounds. His camp’s latest push is to have him step in for an injured Hakeem Dawodu to fight Shane Burgos next month – that’s the kind of fight breakout stars take and win. He seems to have the will and drive to fight as often as he can, which is a good thing, because he’s fun to watch and getting better.

Chikadze is a razor-sharp kickboxer who, as he’s gotten more comfortable in the Octagon and stopped hunting the big finish as much, has really looked like a potential force to be reckoned with. And, as it happens, the finishes are starting to come. Last time out, he showed his potential by knocking out Jamey Simmons with a head kick in Round 1.

Chikadze even has his own signature move: a thunderbolt left body kick that he simply calls the “Giga Kick.” With any luck, we’ll see quite a few of those in 2021. And if he continues to settle in, we could see Chikadze turn himself into a big name this year.

The UFC starts holding normal events before it’s safe

Dana White has always been rather cavalier about COVID-19: he basically spurned the idea of adjusting for the pandemic when the shit started to hit the fan, and the UFC was the first major sports league to start live events after COVID shut down the sporting landscape last spring.

The UFC hasn’t resumed its regular touring yet, and it won’t for quite a while. Instead, it’s operated out of the UFC Apex facility in Las Vegas, which has no accommodations for fans, and the “Fight Island” complex in Dubai. We know that this arrangement will likely continue until at least the spring, but the UFC will start to admit a small number of paying customers for UFC 257 on Fight Island later this month.

Sporting events with fans have resumed on a limited scale over the last few months – the MLB playoffs, as well as many football games, have taken place with drastically reduced capacity. Those have generally taken place in large outdoor, open-air stadiums, not tighter, indoor arenas the UFC customarily runs. But if you think Dana White won’t be holding events with fans in the United States as soon as humanly able, you’re kidding yourself.

I think by April, even with the United States’ haphazard vaccine rollout prolonging the pandemic, the UFC will be back on tour in whatever states allow fans in the arenas. And they’ll be allowing as many fans as they can without getting in trouble. This is just how the UFC operates, for better or for worse. And in this case, it’ll be for the worse.