Petr Yan fights for a place in line

On Saturday, one of the most famous Russian mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters, Petr Yan, will fight, which, quite likely, depends on whether he can again claim the UFC bantamweight title (up to 61 kg), lost due to offensive and controversial defeats. ). In order not to fall out of the race for him, Jan needs to cope with the Georgian Merab Dvalishvili, an extremely uncomfortable opponent.

Saturday’s fight in Las Vegas is the most important event in the career of Petr Yan, who had previously made a crazy somersault, turning the Russian fighter from a lucky one into the main loser of the main promotion in MMA in a matter of months. In the summer of 2020, Yan became the second domestic fighter after Khabib Nurmagomedov to win the UFC championship title. It went to the Russian after the victory over the Brazilian veteran Jose Aldo and, it seemed, would belong to him for a long time.

In any case, there were no fighters “hotter” than the excellent “drummer” Jan, who eventually mastered wrestling skills at a decent level, in the category.

However, Petr Yan parted ways with the title in the spring of 2021, having met with American Aljamain Sterling. Jan, who appeared to be the favorite, actually dominated the octagon, but lost the fight due to a stupid mistake in the fourth round – an illegal knee to the head.

And this was only the beginning of the black streak, which did not cancel Ian’s confident victory over Corey Sandhagen in the “warm-up” fight before the rematch against the new champion. In the second clash with Sterling, Yan had an overwhelming advantage in the end, and the first rounds were more or less equal. However, two out of three referees saw the winner in Aljamain Sterling, who barely made it to the finish line, and UFC head Dana White, unable to restrain himself, called the refereeing a “failure”.

Get Candidate Status Again Petr Yan could at the end of October, if he had dealt with another American fighter – Sean O’Malley. But he again suffered a humiliating defeat. In the second round, the Russian earned a cut over his right eye, however, despite it, he outperformed his opponent by a head in segments. Nevertheless, two of the three judges, as in the case of Sterling, preferred O’Malley.

The stake in the fight with Merab Dvalishvili is obvious for Petr Yan, given the positions of his opponents in the UFC rating. Ian is in third position in it (the promotion clearly took into account the dubiousness of his misfires), Dvalishvili, who has a series of eight victories, is one line lower.

That is, most likely, the one who wins will soon fight for the championship title. A breakdown for Jan, taking into account his already formally badly damaged track record, may turn out to be tantamount to dropping out of the race for him: he will instantly be thrown to the tail of the queue. At the same time, the task of Peter Yan now seems extremely difficult, much more difficult than it would be without these controversial defeats.

ESPN invited to evaluate the alignment in the duel of the famous fighter and expert in mixed martial arts Alan Juban. And he drew attention to one curious nuance, which seems to be of great importance. It is not difficult to assume that Petr Yan, after everything that happened to him in the fights against Aljamain Sterling and Sean O’Malley, no longer believes in the referee’s favor. This means that he will want to take risks, he will look for a knockout or an opportunity to end the fight ahead of schedule with some kind of reception on the ground. Meanwhile, in all his previous fights, Yang looked worst of all when he was overwhelmed by emotions: he is definitely one of those athletes who are contraindicated to start.

And Merab Dvalishvili is famous in many respects for the fact that, not being a spectacular fighter, not possessing a blow that would cause fear, he just knows how to “dry” the fights and put his opponents in an uncomfortable position, hobbling them either on the floor or near the net. It seems that there is no particular danger from Dvalishvili, but nothing can be done against him either. In such a stylist, he spent the lion’s share of his performances, and the recent series, in which only one victory was ahead of schedule, and the remaining seven – by unanimous decision of the judges, shows that the referees love him.

Alexey Dospekhov