Who do MMA insiders believe will be the pound-for-pound best in 2025?

LAS VEGAS — Max Holloway was walking backstage at the UFC Apex last week, just three days before he challenged Alexander Volkanovski in a trilogy bout for the featherweight title at UFC 276.

When pressed with a question, the former featherweight champion — long one of the top fighters on the planet — stopped in his tracks to think. The inquiry: Who will be the best fighter in the world in 2025?

In three years, Holloway figured, he wouldn’t still be competing himself. So, if not “Blessed,” who will be the MMA pound-for-pound king that far in the future? It’s nearly impossible to predict, Holloway said.

“Everyone has their ups and downs,” Holloway said. “The sport keeps growing. It could be someone who is on top now or it could be someone we don’t even know yet. We have to just wait and see.”

ESPN asked more than two dozen athletes and coaches for their prediction on who would be the best MMA fighter in the world in 2025 and there was no clear consensus. The one pattern in their answers: geography.

The majority of responses were fighters from the Caucasus — the Eurasian region between the Black and Caspian seas — and its surrounding areas. The most mentioned names were the likes of Khamzat Chimaev from Chechnya, Russia, now residing in Sweden; Islam Makhachev from Dagestan, Russia; and Shavkat Rakhmonov, born in Uzbekistan and now fighting out of Kazakhstan.

“I would not be surprised if it’s someone from that region of the world that has that strong, heavy wrestling base that allows them to dictate where the fight takes place,” said former UFC double champion and newly inducted UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier, a former pound-for-pound great himself.

Chimaev, 28, is arguably the most promising fighter in the UFC, a surefire future star. He’s 5-0 in the promotion and is coming off a unanimous decision win over Gilbert Burns at UFC 273 in April. ESPN has Chimaev ranked No. 3 in the world at welterweight, and he has also competed successfully at middleweight….