📝 How Petr Yan Reclaimed His Crown

UFC 323’s main event was one of the best fights in recent memory. Petr Yan reclaimed the bantamweight belt after 25 minutes of excellent techniques, tactics, and strategy. Today we’re going to explain how Yan did it and try to answer, what happened to Merab?

Now let’s get into it.

Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili put on an all time classic at UFC 323. The fight was not supposed to be that way.

2 and a half years ago Merab shot 49 takedowns over 25 minutes to overwhelm Yan. But this weekend Yan was the patient aggressor. Yan encroached on his prey much like an apex predator. He held his position, stalking the target, and carefully advanced to feast. And I think the way he did it really speaks to how you can approach combat sports generally.

MMA is an offensive sport, but I think the terms “offense” and “defense” don’t really apply in the same way we’re used to thinking about them.

The literal definition of defense is “the action or role of defending one's goal against the opposition”. We understand this word through games like soccer, basketball, or football where one team is trying to score while the other team is trying to prevent it. But in MMA, boxing, and other combat sports, you can score while your opponent is actively doing so as well. In fact, you can win the match while your opponent is scoring.

Say you’re boxing. Your opponent throws a hook. You defend by weaving under it and score by throwing a hook to the liver in the process. Simultaneous defense and offense.

Now imagine you’re doing jiujitsu. You’re stuck in side control. You maintain your space with frames and other defensive barriers so you can throw up a buggy choke and submit your opponent. Simultaneous defense and offense.

How does this relate to Yan and Merab 2? Yan’s careful offense was preventative defense that kept Merab from scoring with his best offense, wrestling.

As boring and basic as this reads, much of Yan’s success came from his commitment to an active lead hand.

Let’s compare this exchange with an exchange from their first fight.

You see what I mean? Yan covers up defensively and Merab runs over him.

You can’t afford to only play defense against Merab because he’ll rack up takedowns, striking volume, and get the judges on his side. But with Yan committing to going forward in their second fight, it meant Merab was eating his shots.

Even when Merab did get to his spots, Yan was able to fight Merab’s head and hands to escape stop the vast majority of Yan’s takedowns.

Yan even had some awesome scrambles this time ‘round.

I was blown away with how easily Yan escaped here. Usually Merab runs people into the dirt when he gets a rear body lock or takes top turtle.

What really sealed the fight for Yan was the damage he dealt to Merab’s body.

In the previous article I sent I highlighted’s Merab achilles heel, his belly. Merab has been hurt by body shots since he first debuted in the UFC.

Yan slammed all types of strikes into Merab’s body to put a stamp on his win.

Then Yan slapped a horrendous liver shot into Merab in the next round.

In the final round Yan was bak to kicking Merab’s guts out.

As Incredible as Yan’s performance was we still need to ask one giant question. What happened to Merab?

Merab Dvalishvili did not look like himself. Especially considering he shot 49 times the last time he fought Petr Yan. Much of that is because Petr Yan was putting him through the meat grinder. Duh. But we should still zoom out to look for other factors.

Merab landed 7 of his 8 leg kicks in this fight. In their first meeting, Merab landed 21 of his 26 leg kicks. That’s about a 66% drop off in terms of strikes thrown and landed. And these strikes were particularly important in their first meeting.

When Merab took out Yan’s left leg it did more than make it hard for Yan to step around the cage. It forced him to stand with his right leg forward more frequently.

Yan can fight southpaw fine. That’s not the issue. The issue is that when Yan stood southpaw his lead leg was closer to Merab’s lead hand, making it that much easier for Merab to pick up Yan’s leg and run him down.

Aside from Merab’s lack of takedowns attempted he looked kind of slower this time around. He was slow to start too. Merab shot two takedowns in the first 30 seconds of their first fight. This time it took him 3 minutes to shoot at all. I think I know why.

Wrestling just grinds the body down. And choosing to fight by overwhelming people with takedowns can only work for so long. No one in their right mind would advise wrestling through 4 championships fights across 1 year. I’m not even sure if it’s doable.

Do you know what Jose Aldo and Georges St-Pierre have in common? They never fought more than 2 UFC title fights in one calendar year. Jon Jones and Demetrious Johnson only did it once. Anderson Silva did it twice and that’s only because he finished fights quicker.

You can not fight as much as Merab does (like he does) in 1 year and expect to continue performing at a high level. Eventually the body breaks. That’s what starting to happen.

Both Merab’s takedown accuracy and control time are trending down in a major way.

Not all of this is due to Merab’s busy schedule. Much of it has to be because he’s fighting better competition. It’s harder to take Petr Yan down than it is Terrion Ware. Maybe Merab’s diminishing grappling success has as much to do with his busy schedule as it does his increasing striking activity.

His takedown attempts per minute has stayed basically constant while his striking output has steadily increased.

I’m not Merab’s coach and I’m not in his camp. I can only speculate here. But I have to believe that Merab’s focus on striking is directly related to his lack of control time and takedown accuracy. You can’t be good at something you’re not focused on.

I don’t want this to come off as someone excusing away Merab’s loss. Yan defied what we thought was his destiny, avenged his loss, and reclaimed the belt from the teammate of the man that originally took it from him. Plus he looked incredible doing it.

If you wrote that as a movie it would be too unbelievable to produce.

Still, the story hasn’t ended. Yan and Merab are tied at 1-1. A rubber match has to be right around the corner. Judging by their last two performances, the next fight can only be an instant classic.

Tatsuro Taira is one of my favorite young stars in the sport. He’s only 25, but he’s already finished 14 of his 18 wins. He’s not a one trick pony either. He’s got TKO’s, triangles, and face cranks in the UFC already.

Taira took on former flyweight title holder Brandon Moreno. Things got tricky for the young contender early in the fight.

After wiggling around for 3 minutes, Taira escaped and started pressuring Moreno.

Joe Rogan and the other commentators were screaming about how tight the triangle was during the broadcast. The only problem is, Taira was stuck in a reverse triangle for most of the exchange. Even after Moreno switched it the choke was stuck on Taira’s shoulder. It didn’t look close to finishing him.

In the second round Taira got right back in Moreno’s face.

How Taira threaded his outside leg in between Moreno’s thighs is really important. That leg configuration prevents Moreno from completely turning out of back control. It’s also a favorite of Taira’s countryman, Rei Tsuruya.

Taira was able to unload some hard shots on Moreno with his newfound ground control.

Moreno protested the stoppage after the fight ended. I thought the stoppage was completely reasonable. If you’re face down in back control and you collapse to a shoulder after getting hit the ref is going to think you’re going out. They’re going to step in to protect you.

Taira took advantage of his moment to call for a title shot. I’d still like to see Kyoji Horiguchi get the next one, but there’s no reason Taira shouldn’t be up after that. Especially considering Alexandre Pantoja’s gruesome elbow injury.

One Championship put on an awesome grappling match this past Friday. All time great Marcelo Garcia took on the innovative Australian Lachlan Giles.

Garcia returned to competition this year after a decade away. He fought through injuries, family tragedies, and even beat cancer.

Even seeing Garcia alive warms my heart.

In the past 14 years, no gi jiujitsu has completely evolved. Giles proved that to Garcia this weekend.

Giles won’t go down as one of the best competitors ever. But he will always be remembered for one of the most legendary ADCC runs. So for today’s Help Desk Update, I did some analysis on his attacks, how they opened up the sport, and who picked up Giles’s baton.