“SUG VS PETR 2 LFG🔥🔥🔥 #ufc,” Tim Welch wrote on X.
That landed at 20:41 GMT on Saturday. Championship Rounds had posted the result of the UFC 333 main event at 20:32, so Sean O’Malley’s head coach needed nine minutes to start campaigning. Petr Yan had just beaten Merab Dvalishvili by unanimous decision, 48-47 on all three cards, and the Championship Rounds call was blunt: “AND STILL!”
A couple of hours later Welch posted again, this time a link with a short caption asking for honest thoughts. By then MMA Fighting had already asked its followers whether O’Malley is next for Yan, so the debate was running without him.
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Why Suga has a case
O’Malley sits at No. 3 at bantamweight in Knockout Daily’s Cagefile rankings. He’s 20-3 out of Red Hawk Academy, and his most recent fight was June 14, 2026. The number tacked onto the end of Welch’s post tells you exactly what he’s selling: a second fight with Yan, now that the man across from O’Malley is wearing the belt again.
Yan, 20-5, fights out of Archangel Michael Club. Wikipedia lists him as the current and two-time UFC bantamweight champion and a former interim titleholder. He was ranked No. 4 pound-for-pound as of Sept. 22. He also spent a long stretch in Absolute Championship Berkut before the UFC, where he lost a split decision to Magomed Magomedov and later won the rematch for that promotion’s title. He knows something about runbacks.
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The fight that got him here
This one was close enough to sting people. Ilia Topuria, in a clip posted by Championship Rounds, didn’t hide his disbelief at the scoring: “48-47 Yan? Nooo. What are you saying?” UFCStats shared a comparison of Yan in Rounds 1 and 2 against Rounds 3, 4 and 5, and the body kick he kept digging into Dvalishvili became its own meme on ACD MMA before the cards were even read.
Three judges giving the same 48-47 means one round decided the whole night. That margin is exactly what Merab’s camp could point to if it wants a rematch of its own, and it’s the reason Welch didn’t wait.
Alexander Volkanovski also won on the card and posed for a photo with Yan afterward, per Championship Rounds. Nothing in that picture says anything about bantamweight matchmaking. It does show which two men left the building happy.
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The UFC hasn’t named Yan’s next challenger. Welch is the only one who has, and he did it from his phone before Yan was out of the cage.
