I have had a bit of a falling out with MMA in the past 18 months or so as most of the championship bouts have been snooze-fests because a new style of winning is very often the norm these days.
The strategy consists of winning fights on the ground using wrestling and jiu-jitsu and while this is effective, it is also very boring to watch. This style has been brought to the forefront by a lot of people, but mostly by a group from a region called Dagestan, which is where Khabib Nurmagomedov is from and he kicked the door open and let a bunch of other people come in with him.
To fight fans, you might recognize Petr Yan as he has been around for a while. He was champion before and famously lost his championship during covid to Aljamain Sterling via disqualification. Sterling was faking not being able to continue and the fans have not forgiven him for that, I never will.
In this fight last night between Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili, Petr was a heavy underdog and was expected to lose. He was expected to lose because Merab was meant to take him down to the ground like he does with everyone else he fights and then submit Petr in the usual boring and methodical way that he and many other boring fighters have been doing in the past couple of years. The reason why this tactic works for so many people is because nobody can really seem to shut the tactic down... Nobody except for Petr Yan who completely shut down Merab's offense in a way that resulted in one of the most exciting MMA matches I have ever seen in my life.
It's just so typical with these grappling style of fighters. They will stand up for a bit at the start but then it becomes very clear that they are not as good as their opponent at boxing or kickboxing so they unsurprisingly shoot for takedowns. Once they get the takedown they spend the entire match on the ground in a hugging contest and not allowing their opponent to stand up. Often, they will win the fight on points even though they didn't do much damage to the other guy.
I hate this style of fighting and this strategy to victory and so does almost everyone else.
Petr established very early on in the fight that he was the better striker by far as he broke through with punches on a regular basis.
It wasn't just punches though, it was brutal body kicks and even a couple to the head as Petr just seemed to be attacking on all fronts and this made it very difficult to defend against.
As predicted, Merab started to shoot for takedowns as soon as things started to get tough standing up. This works for most of these boring style of fighters because it can be very difficult to defend against someone that is dead set on taking you down to the mat and lying on top of you. Petr apparently was very prepared for this though, and he put on a display of takedown defense the likes of which I have never seen in this sport before.
Look at the stat up there and pay special attention to the take downs on the left. Merab attempted a staggering 29 takedowns, which is a lot even for a boring and predictable fighter like him. Petr stuffed a full 27 of these and also managed to get back up on the 2 that Merab did manage to pull off.
Then, something amazing happened when Petr Yan went for takedowns of his own, which is something that I don't think Merab expected at all. Why on earth would a guy that is presumed to be weak on the ground try to take YOU to the ground? Well, Petr was simply prepared for damn near anything in this fight. You can also look at the "control" stat which means how much time someone was "in charge" on the ground. Here is where you can see how boring Merab is. Despite only having 2 successful takedowns he maintained position and did zero damage, which is the strategy for his style of fighting. And he did this for more total time than Petr did despite having less than half as many total takedowns.
I feel like there needs to be a radical change in the rules as far as takedowns and ground control are concerned but I guess that would be too difficult to accomplish. The rules are there so of course someone is going to come along and exploit it. Since it is possible to win simply by taking your opponent down and keeping him there, people are going to try to do that. Unfortunately, it can be a very effective way of getting victory, even if it bores the piss out of the people watching.
Petr Yan stuffed all these takedown attempts to the point where it seemed that Merab simply couldn't do anything to win this and when the 5 rounds were complete there wasn't a bit of doubt as to who was going to be wearing the belt at the end of it.
The judges saw the match the same way that I did and awarded Petr the unanimous decision victory.
There's always a judge that seems to be watching a different fight than the rest of the world and that judge here was Derek Cleary who must have been on his phone looking at TikToks during round 2.
The great news is that Yan won this match in glorious fashion. the better news is that it appears as though someone has come up with a training camp that is effective at defending against this boring takedown game that so many of the champions are using right now. Hopefully Petr's team teaches this to many others so this sport can be exciting again.
I was going to include some highlights but UFC is such a jerk with their video footage that all of the video compilations that are out there on streaming sites absolutely suck. So I guess you'll just have to take my word for it. If you have the opportunity to see the entire 5 round fight though, I think it is worth it to watch. This is a wonderful moment in MMA history and one that I hope other fighters can learn from. If they do, I think that MMA can become exciting again once everyone learns how to shut down this boring takedown fight style.
Congratulations to Petr Yan. I hope he denies Merab a rematch and instead moves on to someone that has a bit more diversity in his fight style.
