The UFC has decided Petr Yan is the best boxer on its roster, and it made a video to say so. A new tribute posted to the promotion’s YouTube channel bills the bantamweight champion as “UFC’s Greatest Boxer,” cutting together highlights from his fights with Teruto Ishihara, Jose Aldo and Urijah Faber, among others, MMA Mania reported Monday.
The timing is deliberate. Yan (20-5) defends his 135-pound title Saturday, Oct. 24, at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi in a rubber match against longtime rival Merab Dvalishvili. Plenty of people would hand Dvalishvili the matching label as the promotion’s greatest wrestler, and he has a strong argument: “The Machine” is the only fighter in UFC history to clear 100 takedowns.
So the trailer basically edits itself. Best boxer against best wrestler, third fight, belt on the line.
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What the numbers say
The record books are less sold on the boxing crown. The UFC’s all-time striking marks belong mostly to former featherweight champ Max Holloway, and Yan doesn’t land anywhere in the Top 10. Narrow it to his own division and the picture improves. Yan leads bantamweight in significant strikes landed and sits second in total strikes landed.
The guy ahead of him on that second list? Dvalishvili. The wrestler outlands the boxer at 135, which is the kind of stat that would get a highlight package producer quietly reassigned.
Then there’s the finishing problem. Yan, 33, has not finished a fight in over six years, per MMA Mania. That’s a long gap between stoppages for a man the company is marketing as its premier puncher. Volume and accuracy count for plenty in boxing. Still, when you put “greatest” on the thumbnail, people expect somebody to be on the canvas at the end of the reel, and lately the reels have gone to the judges.
NDTV Sports ran its version of the story under a headline flagging a catch in the UFC’s claim, and a pair of other outlets framed it as an open question over whether Yan is the greatest boxer in UFC history.
Yan on the pressure
Yan isn’t spending fight week arguing about the label. He’s focused on the pace Dvalishvili brings. Speaking to Paramount+, he said he can’t really be annoyed by Dvalishvili’s pressure, since moving forward and pressuring is simply how Dvalishvili fights.
“But as we know, diamonds are made under pressure,” Yan said. “Everybody knows how to swim, but not everybody is ready to go too far away from the shore.”
I’m not sure what the shore represents in that metaphor, but I respect a champion who brings a nature documentary to a title fight preview.
My take: the “greatest boxer” tag is a promo line, and it’s a decent one if you only count the bantamweight division, where Yan’s volume numbers are genuinely elite. Stretch it to the whole UFC and it falls apart against Holloway’s records and a six-year finishing drought. The cleanest way for Yan to make the video look smart is obvious, and it’s also the hardest thing to do against Dvalishvili: hurt a guy who never stops coming forward and get him out of there before the scorecards matter. He gets his chance Saturday night in Abu Dhabi.
