{"id":380986,"date":"2026-01-01T06:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T06:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/380986\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T06:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T06:45:07","slug":"is-petr-yan-the-real-fighter-of-the-year-quality-vs-quantity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/380986\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Petr Yan the real fighter of the year? \u2018Quality vs. quantity\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year ago, pretty much everyone agreed<\/a> that Ilia Topuria was THAT GUY after smoking both Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway in perhaps the best consecutive pair of wins in UFC history. Comparatively, there\u2019s a lot more debate this time around. Merab Dvalishvili is probably the most common pick, yet there\u2019s an obvious problem here: he just lost his title a few weeks ago!<\/p>\n

Dvalishvili was on track for a truly unprecedented 2025 when he pursued his fourth title defense of the year opposite Petr Yan, a man he dominated for five rounds in their first collision. Unfortunately for \u201cThe Machine,\u201d Yan flipped the script with a punishing performance, really beating Dvalishvili up for the bulk of 25 minutes. He left Dvalishvili bloodied and battered at UFC 323<\/a> \u2014 there was no doubt who was the better man.<\/p>\n

For that win and storyline, former UFC double champion Henry Cejudo believes Yan is the \u201cFighter of the Year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCall me crazy, and I know a lot of people have been giving it to Merab because he fought four times, but the reality is, you\u2019re only as good as your last fight,\u201d Cejudo explained on his podcast<\/a> (via Harry Kettle<\/a>). \u201cI\u2019ve got to give it to Petr Yan. Why? Because the story is there. What he was able to do, who he fought to get to the title, and then avenge the loss when he got 50-45\u2019d against Merab the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo come back and actually beat him, to me, was impressive. \u2026 It is quality vs. quantity, and just the simple fact that he was able to beat Merab after being 50-45\u2019d, to me, that\u2019s grit. That\u2019s Fighter of the Year. That\u2019s someone who didn\u2019t give up on his dream and still came back five years after he became champion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yan\u2019s performance against Dvalishvili was definitely one of the best of the year outright, and the history between them only made it more impressive. However, it\u2019s also his only title win, as his only other appearance in 2025 was a 29-28 decision victory over Marcus McGhee. That\u2019s a good win, but any \u201cFighter of the Year\u201d argument for Yan is relying almost entirely on the Dvalishvili performance, while other champions won multiple title bouts.<\/p>\n

Who is your fighter of the year, Maniacs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year ago, pretty much everyone agreed that Ilia Topuria was THAT GUY after smoking both Alexander Volkanovski…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,82,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-380986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}