The final UFC pay-per-view of 2025 delivered two new champions who will enter the new year with golden hardware around their waists. Petr Yan and Joshua Van unseated Merab Dvalishvili and Alexandre Pantoja, respectively, and threw their divisions into a tizzy.
At men’s bantamweight, it’s hard to see Yan hold up a title belt and not wonder how things could have been different if the moment that he lost it by disqualification in 2021 had never happened. And at flyweight, a new hard-to-watch moment that resulted in an injury and a changing of the guard may end up affecting that weight class for quite some time.
Brett Okamoto and Jeff Wagenheim give their takeaways on how those moments have altered the timeline of the UFC.
What if Yan didn’t throw that knee?
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Petr Yan completes stunning win over Merab Dvalishvili
Petr Yan somehow pulls off the stunning upset in the main event of UFC 323 to defeat Merab Dvalishvili.
There is an alternate universe where Petr Yan did not throw an illegal knee against Aljamain Sterling and is considered an all-time great.
That illegal knee, man. I hate to go back and get stuck on it, but what a career-changing moment. Remember, Yan was considered one of the absolute best pound-for-pound fighters in the world at that time. He was 15-0. Undefeated. Perfect. He was cruising through Sterling in 2021 when he was disqualified for one of the most egregiously, unforgivable illegal knees in the sport’s history. And that moment stuck with him for two years.
He went on to win an interim belt against Cory Sandhagen in his next bout then lost to Sterling via split decision in 2022 — in a fight I scored for Yan at the time. If we’re honest, it had to be a little hard for Yan to get up for that bout. He dominated Sterling in their first meeting. It was a “trap” kind of title fight, if there is such a thing. After that, a split decision loss to Sean O’Malley appeared to rob him of some of his competitive soul. By the time he fought Merab Dvalishvili in 2023, he was on a 1-3 run and, as he later admitted, injured. And he got run over.
None of this is to make excuses or create a false narrative. But in my opinion, Yan fell victim to a perfect storm of awful circumstances — the first of which, to be fair, he did to himself with the illegal knee. But if he never threw that knee and had never lost that momentum he was carrying in 2021, who is to say he wouldn’t have put together an all-time historic run? His fight against O’Malley would have been five rounds instead of three. He never would have had to face Sterling in a rematch that was probably hard to get up for. And he would have fought Dvalishvili the first time in a far different scenario.
Say I’m making things up. Fine. I stand by it. A single illegal knee changed the course of history in the bantamweight division, more than we have ever known. Because the fighter I watched on Saturday is a legit pound-for-pound talent. — Okamoto
The top of the men’s flyweight division changed in an instant
Tatsuro Taira was on a rocket ship headed to the top of the MMA world as he won the first 16 fights of his career, including six UFC victories. But then he lost a split decision to Brandon Royval in October 2024 and seemed to disappear from men’s flyweight contendership. Taira certainly made his presence felt in a big way on Saturday by knocking out Brandon Moreno, a former champion. That surely will boost the 25-year-old from Japan toward the top of the rankings.
It’s hard to say how long Taira will have to wait for a title shot, however, because in the very next fight at UFC 323, Alexandre Pantoja suffered a brutal injury seconds into his flyweight title defense and lost the championship to Joshua Van. A Pantoja loss by any other means likely would have resulted in an immediate rematch, since he entered the night with more title defenses than any current UFC champion. With the shoulder injury, however, Pantoja could be out for a while. And some of the other top-10 flyweights who had lost to Pantoja might suddenly be back in the running to challenge Van.
Taira has maybe the strongest case. Saturday’s victory was his sixth finish in the UFC. Perhaps even more impressive: It was the first time Moreno has been finished in 20 UFC fights. Pantoja didn’t do it in two fights with Moreno. Former champion Deiveson Figueiredo couldn’t in four tries. Taira’s opportunity to climb to the top spot seems imminent. — Wagenheim