Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev wants a top-five opponent next, and after what he did to Nikita Krylov on Saturday, that ask doesn’t sound crazy.
The unbeaten light heavyweight stopped Krylov at 2:38 of Round 1 on the UFC 333 prelims at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, moving to 11-0. Sherdog reported afterward that Yakhyaev is targeting the division’s top five, which is a big leap for a guy who was fighting for a contract on the Contender Series in 2025. It’s also a reasonable one for a guy who keeps ending fights before most people have found their seats.
The UFC’s own X account told fans to tune in early for the fight, complete with the eyeballs emoji. For once the emoji was earned.
View post on X
The streak
MMA Fighting’s Lee laid out the stoppage times for Yakhyaev’s last five fights in the site’s UFC 333 reaction piece, and they read like a typo:
- Nikita Krylov, 2:38
- Julius Walker, 0:08
- Brendson Ribeiro, 2:52
- Raffael Cerqueira, 0:33
- Alik Lorenz, 0:30
Every one of those came in the first round. Add them up and Yakhyaev has spent less than seven minutes in the cage across five fights since his Contender Series shot. The Walker fight lasted eight seconds, which is roughly how long it takes some guys to touch gloves. Lee named Yakhyaev his biggest winner of the night outside the top two fights and pointed out he doesn’t turn 26 until January.
Krylov was the first name on that list with real mileage. MMA Fighting’s Jed Meshew described him as someone who has been a top-15 fighter for a long time, but also flagged that the veteran is now 1-4 over his last five, with the losses coming by stoppage. Meshew picked Krylov as one of the night’s biggest losers and suggested the end may be near. That cuts both ways for Yakhyaev. He beat a recognizable, longtime ranked light heavyweight, and he beat him at a moment when Krylov looks like he’s on the way down.
View post on X
The card around him
Yakhyaev’s fight sat on a loaded preliminary card that also featured Azamat Murzakanov vs. Dominick Reyes. Up top, Alexander Volkanovski stopped the previously undefeated Movsar Evloev to keep the featherweight title, and Petr Yan beat Merab Dvalishvili by unanimous decision in their trilogy to hold onto the bantamweight belt. Plenty got lost in that shuffle. A 2:38 finish of Krylov somehow didn’t.
Quick take
I like a fighter who looks at his record and asks for the hard fight instead of the safe one, and Yakhyaev isn’t asking for a belt, he’s asking for a ranking that matches his results. The honest problem is that nobody knows yet what happens when somebody takes his first shot and stays upright, because nobody has. The only way to find out is to put a real top-five guy across from him. If the matchmakers hand him another unranked name, he’ll probably knock that guy out in 30 seconds too, and we’ll have learned nothing except that Julius Walker’s eight seconds weren’t a fluke.
