Fight Coverage
Coach Conversation | UFC 323: Dvalishvili vs Yan 2
Standout Striking Coach Sean Madden Helps Break Down Saturday’s Bantamweight Championship Clash
Championship fights are layered battles, with the competitors stepping into the Octagon operating at the highest level in their respective weight classes. Breaking down how these pivotal contests could possibly play out is a challenging venture, which is why UFC staff writer E. Spencer Kyte has taken to enlisting the help of some of the sharpest minds in the sport to help dissect these critical contests.
Ahead of this weekend’s UFC 323 bantamweight championship main event, Kyte connected with Denver-based striking coach Sean Madden to breakdown the matchup between titleholder Merab Dvalishvili and challenger Petr Yan.
Best Trait of Each Fighter
Kyte: Alright Coach, it’s time to get into it. Bantamweight title fight — what’s the best trait of Merab Dvalishvili and what’s the best trait of Petr Yan?
Madden: For Merab — this is fourth fight of the year?
Kyte: Yeah.
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Madden: That’s insane, but we’ll talk about that later because that’s definitely something to discuss in terms of this fight and it could go both ways.
His pace and his conditioning are always going to be the first things we talk about when it comes to his best traits because that’s what separate him from the pack, even in a division as crowded and stacked at 135. He’s still putting himself a mile ahead of these guys with his pace.
I made this post on X the other day kind of half-joking, but half not talking about the three things you need be elite in MMA today and Merab has two of the three and he’s improving on the third. The first one is durability — not only in each fight, but how many times you can fight in a year, how your body holds up to weight cuts — and Merab is extremely durable and in a sport like this, that is really important and he has that in spades.
The next one I had on there is confidence: unrelenting self-belief, bordering on delusion. Merab has that belief — he had it before he was champion and I believe it’s amplified now that he is champion and he’s done the work, and that’s a really powerful tool.
Full Fight | Merab Dvalishvili vs Petr Yan 1
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Full Fight | Merab Dvalishvili vs Petr Yan 1
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The last one I had on there was Fight IQ, and I think Merab is getting better with that. I don’t think it’s his strong suit, but I do feel that as he notches more 5-round fights under his belt and gains more experience, he’s learning that more and more. Those three things are such a powerful combination in MMA these days, and Merab has all three of those I think.
For Yan, I’ve been a big fan for a long time and I think he’s one of the more well-rounded fighters in the UFC, in my opinion. I love his skill set. I love his Fight IQ — he definitely has the Fight IQ — and I think those are his two biggest traits.
UFC 323 COUNTDOWN: Full Episode | Dvalishvili vs Yan 2 | Pantoja vs Van
He’s has such a great offensive and defensive arsenal in his striking, and then his scrambling ability and his offensive wrestling are really solid too. His trips are beautiful to watch. He has such a fun skill set in a division like this, but his IQ and well-rounded game stand out to me the most.
Kyte: With Merab, when you’re looking at his Fight IQ — and I agree 100-percent that it’s coming along, and we’ve seen that, especially this year — how difficult is it if you’re on the other side of it or someone in the division, what’s it like seeing him leveling up there when he’s already at the top and on a 14-fight winning streak?
Madden: It has to be terrifying for some of these guys, right?
Petr Yan | Greatest Hits
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Petr Yan | Greatest Hits
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He’s continuing to improve every single fight and he’s not at his full potential yet. He’s getting close, for sure, but he’s not there yet, and that’s really scary to think about given how far he’s separated himself from the division already.
If you’re any of these guys in the conversation around No. 1 contender or up next, you’ve got to be sweatin’ bullets a little bit, thinking, “This guy has some weaknesses, but largely he has a ton of strengths and he continues to improve on those.” It has to be a scary thought, man. Beating him is a tall task.
Kyte: That’s the tricky part because you never want to psyche yourself out and you’ve gotta go into these things believing “I can beat this guy.” You’ve gotta have that reasonable delusion like Cory talked about with McKenzie (Pavacich) going into their fight, and you absolutely have to think like that…
Madden: A hundred percent — it is an absolute requirement of this job, particularly at that level.
Order UFC 323: Dvalishvili vs Yan 2
Kyte: For sure, but I would also understand the moments where you look at it and have that doubt, have that real brief pause from the delusion too.
With Yan, when you mention the IQ, I agree wholeheartedly. I think more than most people, he maps out his fights really well, and we see that where the first round is essentially a throwaway — he loses the first round just about every time, but it’s with reason, it’s with purpose.
How do you contextualize something like that for people? There are going to be people where this is their first time seeing Petr Yan, watching him fight, so as a coach, how do you assess that from a strategic standpoint and explain it to people?
I want to be clear: I don’t think he’s intentionally losing rounds, but he’s not worried about losing the round either because he knows what he’s taking away from it.
UFC 323 Countdown | Merab Dvalishvili vs Petr Yan 2
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UFC 323 Countdown | Merab Dvalishvili vs Petr Yan 2
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Madden: That’s a really good way of putting it: he knows what he’s capable of in the later rounds.
Look, I wouldn’t — and this is something I have a bone to pick with him about is that he’ll still do it in 3-round fights, and that as a coach would make me nervous.
Kyte: 29-28 against Marcus McGhee doesn’t convey the dominance you maybe want to convey as a top contender, and I say that with no shade towards McGhee at all.
Madden: Yeah! You’ve only got 10 minutes after that first round, and if you look at his last couple fights, let’s be honest: he’s not putting guys away necessarily. He’s winning decisions. It’s not like he’s downloading this information in the first five minutes and then going out there, exploiting it and finishing guys.
These fights are closer than maybe they need to be. Over five rounds, I understand that decision and I do think for people that have that level of experience, it can be a good idea. I don’t know if it’s going to be a good idea against someone like Merab, and we saw that play out already once.
To be able to gather all that information, make the reads offensively and defensively, I think it’s the sign of an intelligent fighter and an experienced fighter, but the tradeoff is “I’m comfortable losing this round, but I have the information I need to pull ahead or get the finish.” I would be a little more confident if he was getting finishes in these fights after giving the first round, but he hasn’t shown that in a while.
His last finish was (Jose) Aldo or (Urijah) Faber, right? So it’s been a minute.
Kyte: Yeah, it was Aldo, which is five years ago now and against a guy that was older.
Madden: Look at the age of both those guys that he finished. The competition is getting tougher, you’re fighting for the belt against a guy you’ve already fought, a guy that has already done well against some of the other elite strikers in this division.
I would not advise that approach in this rematch, especially because while rematches are always different fights, you did fight this guy for 25 minutes already and on top of that, you have a lot of film that has come out since you fought him last time. We’ll talk about this part later too though.
Kyte: We’ll certainly get to it, but it’s not like Merab is doing anything different. He’s not coming out with a bunch of new looks. He’s developing and improving, but he’s not changing it up.
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Madden: Why would he? Not of the opposition is giving him a reason to yet.
Path to Victory
Kyte: What the path to victory for each guy here?
Madden: I hate saying it like this and making it so easy, but Merab cruised to a decision in their first fight, he’s only gotten better since then, as we just talked about, and so it’s on Yan to show something different in this fight. The onus is on him, the ball is in his court.
Merab’s path to victory is to do what he’s done to every other person so far this year in his first three title fights: drown them in his pace and pressure, continue to mix in the wrestling. We saw in his fight with Sandhagen that combining the wrestling and striking together is starting to produce better results and he’s hurting strikers on the feet.
Kyte: Your striking is always going to look better, have a greater impact when people have to be hyper-aware of getting taken down. It’s those half-seconds we talk about all the time.
Madden: They have to. They have to sell out against it. And if you have the self-belief in a small level-change feint and then throwing two punches as hard as you can because Yan isn’t going to take you down and hold you down, man, you’d be surprised at the results you could get, even if the technique isn’t perfect.
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I hate saying that being a striking coach, but that’s the reality of this matchup is that he has that advantage already embedded in Yan’s head and he can use that to his advantage to create opportunities with the striking.
Kyte: And what about the challenger?
Madden: What I would like to see with Yan is for him to take some calculated risks to win this fight.
We just talked about it, but starting slow and increasing the pace over five rounds just means that Merab is gonna be two miles ahead of you by the time this fight ends instead of one mile ahead of you.
Kyte: Right.
Madden: You know the takedown is coming, you also know you can get up when he takes you down — you did in the first fight and most people can — so you just have to take risks. It’s not about waiting for the takedown: it’s about making Merab take a shot that he’s not comfortable with, making him pay on the way in and then being ready to scramble immediately.
I think something he could have success with is these quick follow-up shots, and what I mean is throwing a kick immediately into a punch. Someone who does this well is (Tom) Aspinall — I think he had a knockout with a knee into a same-side elbow.
Kyte: Yeah, the Serghei Spivac fight.
Madden: That’s right. It’s just giving them something to look at with the first strike and then landing the second one right away, so in my mind, it’s kind of a noncommittal kick that Merab might reach for, but if I’m throwing a loose right kick and my right hand is coming right behind it, I might be able to hurt him with something.
Now the tradeoff, of course, is he had your leg, but if you hit him hard enough, he’s gonna let go of it. Pairing these quicker strikes in succession that come off the same side of the body to get Merab to look at the first one could be a way to have some success.
But again, I need to see Yan take some calculated risks in this fight. The worst thing that could happen is that this fight finishes, it’s 25 minutes again and it’s the same result as the first time around. Part of it might not be his fault because Merab might just be that good, but you have to try something new this go-round in order to get a different result.
I think he’s gotta be on the gas a little bit sooner and I think he’s gotta take some risks in this fight.
Kyte: How much are you trying to drill into him that “we’ve gotta go first; we’ve gotta be the one going forward” here?
He’s a terrific counter-striker, but another thing we always talk about is that you can wait and wait for the chance to counter and then two, three minutes are gone and you haven’t landed anything significant. And I you let this dude come forward, that’s the recipe for getting beaten, again.
So how much emphasis are you putting on “we gotta switch it up” and put together all the stuff we’ve been talking about so far?
ATHLETE PROFILES: Merab Dvalishvili | Petr Yan
Madden: That’s absolutely what he needs to do, and to me, it’s the mark of a champion.
Winning and taking the title off someone like Merab — the ability to adjust your style and beat someone like this, that has already beaten you once and been dominant this year, to me, shows you’re a true champion. If you make large adjustments in the core facets of your game based on the stylistic matchup in this fight in order to beat this specific opponent, that says something special.
You can still be an aggressive counter-fighter at times, but it’s by pushing him to the fence and making him pay for mistakes there, as opposed to just sitting and waiting because as you just said, a guy like Merab is a train on the tracks otherwise and you’re gonna get run over 100 percent if you do that.
X Factor
Full Fight | Petr Yan vs Urijah Faber
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Full Fight | Petr Yan vs Urijah Faber
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Kyte: Okay, so what’s the x-factor here?
Madden: I talked about it briefly at the start, but man, I really love rematches because the fight is gonna be different and it’s an opportunity for both fighters to make adjustments, and I’m such a fan of cerebral fighters, so for fighters to come out and present a new version of themselves in a rematch is always exciting to watch.
Yan has another opportunity here and you have a lot of film on this guy — even on this year alone it’s five rounds with Umar (Nurmagomedov), five rounds with Cory, and three rounds with O’Malley, so you have an enormous amount of footage on this guy to work from. We know what Merab is capable of and it’s still super-dangerous, but…
Kyte: There’s not a lot of surprises.
Madden: You should know his game pretty intimately now. Can you stop it? That’s a different story, and I get it, but there is a ton of footage out there, you have a good team around you, so you should be able to game plan for this, and with someone as disciplined and experienced as Yan, you would hope he’d be up to task to execute that game plan.
So for me the x-factor is the rematch for Yan and the footage he can prepare with. And for Merab, we touched on this briefly too, but man — fighting four times in a year, title fights, with the last one being in early October is crazy.
Most people at this level of the sport would say that an 8-week camp for a 5-round fight is not a lot of time.
Kyte: He’s gone January to June, and then June to October, and even that is quicker than we even really talked about at the time. It feels different because it’s two very different seasons — start of summer and the into late fall — but that was four months, which isn’t long, and now he’s looking to do two months here for his fourth title fight of the year.
Madden: You’re not even getting a weekend off following your last title fight, not that he wants the weekend off, but you’re not getting it either way. You’re back to work, every session counts, and again, this is the x-factor for a reason because it can work for him or against him.
It has worked for him thus far, but there is gonna be a point of diminishing returns. We’re at the end of a calendar year where he’s already fought 13 rounds and that’s a lot of cage time, man. Yes, you’re winning these fights dominantly, but they’re still fights, you’re still getting hit, you’re still taking damage, and you’re preparing on top of that too.
Kyte: Even if he’s just dealing with the usual wear-and-tear it’s all adding up, right?
Madden: How about mental fatigue?
Kyte: So the benefit of staying active as he has is that you don’t need a big 12-week, “get back into shape” camp because you’re already in shape, but there has to be just general fatigue of every kind that sets in because of all those miles, all those rounds.
He fought all eight rounds he was booked for last year too, so 21 rounds and change in two years.
Madden: Those are insane numbers.
We also have to acknowledge that he’s mid-30s — 34, right?
Kyte: Yep, 35 in January.
Madden: Durability doesn’t last forever. Do I think he’s close to that? No, not necessarily, but when you’re fighting four title fights a year, you’re starting to push those limits a little bit.
We’ll see, but it’s something we have to pay attention to in this fight for sure.
Kyte: If you’re on the other side, if you’re Petr Yan, are there ways to try to exploit that? Conditioning has never been a problem, but if it’s ever going to be a problem, it’s this fight.
If his body is ever going to be less than it normally is, it’s going to be this fight, so is there a way to exploit that beyond what we talked about earlier of going forward, being first, and making him work more?
Madden: No, I think that’s all it comes down to, and if something presents itself in the fight — you land a knee to the body and it shows there is something there or you’re touching that calf and he’s reacting to it more than normal, okay, but other than that, you’ve just got to to step on that gas and see what comes out of this.
One Coaching Curiosity
Kyte: What’s are the curiosity points for you in this one?
Madden: For Yan I have a specific one related to his defense. He cycles through different defenses with his strikes, but his high guard is not really conducive to good wrestling defense, and someone like Merab is gonna take advantage of that.
So a small thing I’m going to be paying attention to is whether he’s adjusted his hand positioning at all to accommodate for being able to dig underhooks on the takedown and having that first line of defense available.
Kyte: Get the hands mid-body instead of right up around your head the whole time.
Madden: Absolutely — finding a middle ground where you can defend punches but still dig some underhooks is gonna be important for him.
And then for Merab, this is interesting because he knocked Cory down and was close to finishing him with strikes, and we’ve seen Merab act on stuff like this in the past, so will this end up putting him in trouble against a good striker like Yan? It comes down to the Fight IQ stuff but knocking down and almost putting away someone as good as Cory on the feet could end up hurting you if you’re not careful with it.
Kyte: That’s the evolution of the one Tyson (Chartier) and I had for his last fight, coming off the submission where we wondered, “Does he start chasing more now that he’s got a taste of finishing someone?
Does he get out of character a little? Does he start to get away from what got him to where he is?
I think Sandhagen made him stick to the script more by having a good round straight after getting hurt that makes him reset, get back to what he normally does.
Madden: He kept Merab honest after that, for sure.
Kyte: But does even hurting him make you start changing it up a little, looking for stuff a little more?
Madden: Listen: we know Merab is a showman at heart. Ge loves to play to the crowd in every single fight and if you have a moment of success like that, as a fighter with these tendencies and that personality, it can bite you in the bite pretty quickly.
Kyte: All of that, combined with this being a rematch is what I am so fascinated by when it comes to this fight. These two don’t like each other either and he’s been thinking about this one since before the fight with Sandhagen.
Yan is just a dude you don’t want to f*** around with. This is a dude you don’t want to be flexing to the crowd against. If ever there was a fight to where you go back to being no-nonsense, buttoned-up Merab again, this is it to me.
Madden: A hundred percent.
Kyte: And he’s at the point in his career and his trajectory where if there is going to be a “FAFO moment,” it’s this one, because he’s trying to do some historic s***. No one has ever successfully defended their belt four times in a year.
But this quiet Russian dude has one goal in mind.
Madden: To ruin everything you’ve worked for!
Kyte: And he’s said — and it’s the other curiosity point for me — that he was dealing with injuries in the first fight and a rematch would be very different. Okay, here’s your shot, so show me how different it can be.
He’s someone that if he was severely compromised, it could be different, but here’s your chance. Sean O’Malley told us that it would be different when he was healthy and the only thing different about it was that he got beaten even worse the second time around.
Madden: Right, and you can only use it this one time, so make it different.
Kyte: Yep. Time to show it. I can’t wait for this one. I’m so pumped.
Madden: Same, man. Same.
UFC 323: Dvalishvili vs Yan 2 took place live from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 6, 2025. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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