Petr Yan downplays Merab Dvalishvili defending title 4 times in 2025: ‘It’s very easy to fight in your backyard’

Petr Yan stands in the way of history this Saturday when he challenges Merab Dvalishvili for the bantamweight title in the main event UFC 323.

Should Dvalishvili win, it would mark his fourth successful title defense of 2025, setting a UFC record for the most successful defenses in a calendar year. It’s undeniably an impressive goal, but one that Dvalishvili believes comes with an asterisk.

Yan’s qualm with Dvalishvili’s achievement stems from the fact that Dvalishvili currently splits time training between New Jersey and Las Vegas. His title defenses this year have taken place in New Jersey, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles (a four-hour drive from Vegas). Yan views that as a home-field advantage of sorts, which takes away from what Dvalishvili is one win away from accomplishing.

“It’s very easy to fight in your backyard,” Yan said via a Russian translator at UFC 323 media day on Wednesday. “Here, or Los Angeles, it’s basically like fighting at home. You can fight at home every single weekend in your backyard, you can fight all the time. When I signed a contract in 2018, I had five fights that year as well, they were not at home. If I could fight at home every one of those fights, I could fight 10 times that year.”

In 2018, Yan made his UFC debut and immediately began a push to a title opportunity, winning five fights from June 2018 to June 2019 and later going on to defeat Jose Aldo for a vacant bantamweight title in 2020. He lost the belt in his first defense when he was disqualified after landing an illegal knee on a grounded Aljamain Sterling. After beating Cory Sandhagen for an interim title, Yan went on to lose his rematch with Sterling via a controversial split decision.

Yan is 1-1 in rematches, having avenged a loss to Magomed Magomedov prior to joining the UFC. He aims to have that same success against Dvalishvili, who defeated Yan in a Fight Night main event in March 2023.

“Obviously, we have a lot of information that we downloaded about each other,” Yan said. “We know each other better, but if you look at my first two rematches with Magomedov and Sterling, you can see that I was 100 percent better in the second fight so I am determined to make sure that I’m much better in this second fight against Merab.

“I’m sure they also watched the rematch against Sterling, this whole sitting behind the back, dragging out the fight, all of that, but I’m sure I got the victory in that fight as well.”

Despite winning three straight fights since his clash with Dvalishvili, Yan is a huge underdog heading into Saturday. He acknowledged that the deck is stacked is stacked against him, which is nothing new for the 11-year veteran.

“Just think about this, I flew across the entire planet, I come back to rematch Sterling or Merab in their hometown,” Yan said. “Everything’s against me, just think about how much pressure that is, just think how hard it is, obviously it’s much harder for me than it is for them.”