Petr Yan isn’t drawing up a list of names he’d rather avoid. The bantamweight champion is game to defend his belt against Umar Nurmagomedov, LowKickMMA reported Wednesday, and he framed his answer in five words: “I’ve never said no to anyone.”
Yan has fought his way into the right to be choosy. He took the title from Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 323, then ran it back in a trilogy and got his hand raised on the scorecards again after five rounds that MMA Fighting called thrilling. That makes two wins over the man who had owned the division. Somebody clearly appreciated the result: a clip posted on X by @DovySimuMMA shows Yan being gifted a brand new Rolls Royce after the Merab win. Not a bad bonus.
Those two losses closed out a serious run for Dvalishvili, who won the UFC title in 2024 and defended it three consecutive times before Yan stopped the streak. Merab isn’t sitting still, either. He’s booked for a wrestling match against old rival Marlon Moraes at RAF Abu Dhabi on Nov. 14, the promotion announced Wednesday. Their first meeting came at UFC 266 in 2021, when Dvalishvili survived an early scare and came back to knock Moraes out in Round 2. It’ll be Merab’s fourth RAF appearance on a card headlined by Khamzat Chimaev vs. Colby Covington.
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Then there’s Sean O’Malley, who doesn’t think Yan’s next opponent is up for discussion at all. Speaking with Michael Bisping, O’Malley laid it out plainly: “There’s not even a debate. I’m next. Um, just a matter of when and where, but who is Petr Yan.” In a separate clip shared by Red Corner MMA, the former champ said he wants to sweep every round against Yan (“I’ve got to make sure I win that first round and then the second round”), before cracking that he’d happily accept a knockout, a decision or even a robbery. Points for honesty on that last one.
No booking is official, and the UFC hasn’t said which direction it’s leaning. So Yan’s comments read less like a callout and more like a refusal to play the avoidance game while two very different contenders stake their claims.
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My take: O’Malley is the bigger draw and he knows it, but Yan vs. Umar is the fight I’d rather see. Yan just spent ten rounds solving the most relentless pressure wrestler the division has produced, and a Nurmagomedov is a whole different grappling puzzle with a sharper striking game layered on top. That’s a title fight that tells us something. O’Malley can talk his way into the queue, and he probably will. But when the champion says he’s never said no to anyone, the cleanest way to prove it is to say yes to the hardest stylistic test on the board.
