The Ringcraft of Petr Yan: Merciless Necessities
Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC
Author’s Note: This is a fairly complicated article and I want to make it clear from the very beginning that I don’t believe it’s possible to have been done without multiple examples and significant amount of explanation — which also means I will be making a number of claims about fighters you may or may not agree with — and the result is a fairly lengthy piece that had to be split into sections. I don’t know if my explanation will make perfect sense, though I gave it an effort as I find a fighter as good and interesting as Petr Yan worth delving into.
Petr Yan is the best fighter in mixed martial arts right now. And, if he isn’t, then he’s damn close to it.
Normally, this would be a bold enough statement for the rest of an article to prove, but I’ll go even further: Petr Yan is the best offensive fighter MMA has ever seen.
Since a breakout prospect battle with Magomed Magomedov in ACB/ACA, Yan has been the bantamweight to keep an eye on. He wasn’t simply an aggressive dynamo whose lust for blood would appeal to any spectator. He had the developing craft and foundational game that would make him a threat in just about any division. His early run in the UFC proved he was worth the hype and made talented fighters look as though they didn’t even belong in the cage with him. At best, Jimmie Rivera fought the fight of his life and still only won at most one round. To accomplish these feats at Bantamweight - a division where the competition is extraordinarily fierce — should be a statement in of itself.
And so, we arrive at Yan’s last three fights: against Jose Aldo, Aljamain Sterling and Cory Sandhagen respectively, where we actually got to see Yan pose questions and show answers to challenges of the highest caliber.
Author’s Note: As an aside, I recommend reading the MMA Metagame articles written by Danny Martin and this piece on MMA footwork by Lukasz and Mateusz Fenrych to receive some context for my process of thought here (and some technical jargon I cannot cover).
Jose Aldo: The Torch Passes
Jose Aldo may be past his best, but his experience and incredible grasp of MMA forced Yan to dig deeper into his arsenal than ever before. Aldo’s modern fights may have an asterisk in that his output will gradually fall off and subsequently he’ll offer less and less resistance as time goes on; though in light of his recent showcase performance against Pedro Munhoz it bears mentioning that you need a lot more than the ability to push a high pace to break Aldo down, however aged he may be. The former featherweight champion forced questions out of Yan that not even Jimmie Rivera did, where positioning and initiative became everything. When Yan proved early that he was a versatile enough pocket threat, Aldo committed his strategy towards economy of motion and pragmatic minimalism.
Explaining everything Aldo did and why it stands as one of the most impressive veteran showings in recent memory requires its own piece (which, as an aside, has been written and will be republished in time), but the short explanation is thus: Aldo picked his spots meticulously, carefully choosing when to act, what he would throw, and why he would use a set move. It’s the Occam’s Razor, applied to MMA: whatever the simplest answer was within set limitations, Aldo chose to apply it.
Yan is at his most potent going forward? Threaten him with knees, take a slight pivot and reposition, or take a step forward yourself. In other words: Minimize Yan’s ability to go forward as much as possible with the least effort.
I’ve already written about how Petr Yan is an extraordinary tactician before, so it shouldn’t stand as a surprise that he found the answers here. He used throwaway strikes to force Aldo’s head movement and to move him backwards while switching between the body and head, intentionally fed Aldo openings and countered him accordingly, and gradually broke him down by making him work. It wasn’t simply more activity — Yan methodically manipulated what Aldo did and hadn’t done against him. If it was a battle of careful positioning, then Yan just had to force as many repositionings and engagements as possible.
There may be a criticism levied at Yan that struggling with a post-prime Aldo is an indictment, though I’d like to point out a few things:
1) Our team has consistently emphasized how Jose Aldo is the best MMA has ever had at recognizing the greatest utility of fundamentals and purposeful control. And how many fighters have managed to fight with the poise and experience of Aldo after a career that is close to spanning two decades?
2) Not many fighters in MMA actually get to fight an instructional five-rounder where they have to learn to adapt and evolve over twenty-five minutes against a versatile opponent. And how many fighters have actually outdone Jose Aldo in a full or scheduled five-rounder when Aldo is as experienced a five-round fighter as you can find? This fight was a valuable learning experience and showcase for Yan because:
3) Jose Aldo’s experience and technical proficiency in MMA actually makes him the finest fighter to weigh how good a fighter his opponent really is. When you consider the aforementioned tactics Aldo used in this fight — that, I’ll note, no one else has even come close to replicating — and that Yan overcame those, should that not be a reflection that Yan is incredibly good? Denigrating Yan here undermines Aldo’s effort — and vice versa.
And I suppose if there’s still doubts about Jose Aldo’s legitimacy in this performance or how special it is that Yan defeated him, then maybe his next two fights might convince you otherwise.
Aljamain Sterling: Displaying Defensive Control
Sterling’s evolution into a high-octane whirlwind of unorthodox strikes and a lethal backtake game has seen him emerge as one of the best fighters in the entire sport. Although Sterling’s standup involved significant amounts of ‘jank’, no one at bantamweight had the sort of game-over threat Sterling had once he could get their back.
Sterling may not be the most fundamentally-sound striker, but his strategic process against Yan made sense: draw the handfight, push forward behind volume, throw kicks off punches and vice versa, push Yan to the fence and initiate wrestling exchanges. Sterling did land frequently to the body and he did manage to succeed in backing Yan up. One obvious problem would lie in Yan’s razor-sharp responses: he would fight grips and turn Aljo against the fence. This wasn’t the big underlying issue, however. The real issue was just how much Aljo had to work for minimal rewards. And that can be attributed to the development of Petr Yan’s nigh-unbreakable high guard paired with his defensive footwork.
High guards prioritize defense to the head by catching shots on the forearms, forcing the opponent to step in closer and have to deal with the threat of catch-and-pitch counters where each strike caught on the guard is immediately followed by a return strike.
At its most lethal, counterpunching, when paired with adequate positioning and other little tricks, can decimate an opponent.
Conversely, the weaknesses of the high guard should be obvious: first, to counterpunch effectively, you to have to be within range — which, by MMA standards, is basically phone booth range. Second, the high guard can obscure vision and the forearms can only cover so much of the upper body. In MMA, there are many users of the high guard, though even the better practitioners will remain static with their forearms, which allow a savvy combination striker to work around and below the guard. Even skilled counterpunchers can be outdone by savvy rhythm manipulation that can trick the high guard practitioner into using incorrect elbow placement in the wrong place at the right time.
What makes Yan’s high guard stand out among MMA fighters, however, is that he understands that he needs to combine it with ancillary tools — namely upper body movement, positioning, and his forearms — that you would see among practiced boxers. Yan will fold his hips, alter the trajectory of his elbows, and apply head movement all at once. Even though the aforementioned weaknesses of using a high guard still apply to Yan, utilizing all of these tactics together makes him an obscenely difficult target to hit, even to the body. Not to mention the risk of running into a potential counter or getting your attacks parried and then countered.
Even worse, Yan will always adjust his position according to his opponent’s position, even if they’re firing strikes at him. Although Yan’s shifts and explosive blitzes are patented choices, his most effective movement are his small steps — each one a small, barely perceptible reaction to keep himself evasive while still being dangerous offensively.
Against Aljo, who had to keep touching and attacking, Yan’s positioning allowed him to identify the meaningful offense Sterling looked for and shut it down. For example Sterling always looked to distract upstairs, and Yan would prepare himself for the kicks by settling at a longer distance and using cross checks. Ultimately, Sterling was forced to keep a pace he couldn’t maintain — a pace that Yan kept diffusing from being effective as it went along on top of it. After being floored by an expertly timed right hand, Sterling realized he had to stay on top of Yan and work harder to escape any pocket exchanges — only to find himself outpositioned and outplayed at every turn.
Interlude: Explaining Yan’s In-Fight Process
Let’s take a step back here and ask ourselves a question: How does Yan win fights?
The general book on Yan is already out there: He’s not necessarily an active starter. In the opening round, he takes the role of an observer. As each round progresses, however, the Russian’s aggression and effectiveness builds, until he’s broken his opponent down, after which he simply overwhelms them. That said, Yan’s game differs from your conventional MMA “builder”.
Most MMA fighters facilitate their pace and momentum through a higher output. In the last decade, MMA’s standup game has been crafted through volume and activity. For many fighters, when pushed, the solution is often to work harder. In other words, because the vast majority of the MMA metagame is built upon aggression, fighters are likely to look for dealing the most damage as often as possible. But Petr Yan differs from that precedent because, although he is capable of throwing at greater volume, his increased aggression manifests through his effectiveness. That is, Yan will identify what an opponent does and how to allocate his game accordingly in a way that maximizes his control of the fight.
The premise behind Yan’s entire game, therefore, lies in answering two questions:
1) What are my opponent’s strengths and strategy and how do I diffuse it?
2) What are my opponent’s weaknesses and how can I exploit them?
Here’s the one part that needs to be illustrated no matter what: Petr Yan is incredibly economical with what he chooses to do, when he decides to do it; he does things with intention. To think Yan enters every fight and needs to make his reads to win is incorrect — no one with Petr Yan’s well-roundedness and eye for detail enters a fight only to adjust (against John Dodson, Yan cut loose from the very beginning). Instead, Yan will enter fights with specific reads on what an opponent’s basic game is, have preset defensive and offensive measures, and then set himself to deconstruct their entire game.
To paraphrase: Petr Yan wants to see everything an opponent can do to him and then ensure they can never do it again without suffering significant consequences for trying.
To him, it’s only about doing what is necessary to win without compromising anything and without giving any weakness away for free. An individual fighter’s ringcraft — or how they manage space — is tied to their actions. And no action with Petr Yan is wasted. If any weakness is shown, he’ll take the opponent’s neck without hesitation. If they are successful, he’ll meet them where they’re strongest and beat them there.
The Mitigation of Aljamain Sterling
We’ve already been discussing Aljamain Sterling’s fight with Yan, so let’s review: Aljamain Sterling wants to enforce his physicality and pace to get to the ground with unorthodox volume.
How does Yan begin this fight and why?
He stands right in the center, steps back only if Sterling commits to an action he can’t parry and threatens Sterling back with his own feints. Taking the initiative doesn’t simply have to be done with offense from the very start; sometimes, the threat of it alone can create opportunities to see what an opponent can offer. Sterling wants to get the fight to the cage and ground? Then, Yan decides to see what he can do to try to get it there whilst still guarding and repositioning accordingly. Those feints he does imply the threat of pocket exchanges and cause Sterling to not overpursue.
It takes less than a minute for Yan to make his read: Sterling wants to handtrap Yan’s lead hand and use it to set up his kicking game. It isn’t until Aljo starts handfighting that he can kick safely; at distance, they’re easy to check. The handfight is the distraction — Yan has to wait until Sterling crafts a strike worth guarding.
Obviously, Aljo has to work incredibly hard and creatively to even land those kicks — and said kicks are identified as the main striking threat.
So, Yan plays back a bit: He periodically switches to southpaw to force Aljamain to create a new attack and waits for kicks, then either repositions, catches, or looks to guard.
Sometimes, he’ll even stop committing to the handfight to force Sterling to use throwaways as a distraction — and he quickly teaches Aljamain that empty volume and passivity will get immediately and viciously punished. If the threatening strike (the kick) isn’t going to come, then he’ll push back or just easily reset.
Consequently, Sterling has to change strategies: he can’t afford to do nothing and let himself go on the backfoot. His only choice is to be aggressive all the time. And this works to Yan’s favor because he knows Sterling’s gameplan and which parts are actually dangerous: only full commitments. This means Sterling is liable to tire himself out while Yan can afford to wait for his moments.
Even when Sterling adapts by drawing out Yan’s counters, Yan still learns to anticipate that Sterling is looking to step in and tie-up or push forward with body shots. And, frankly: Yan’s reaction time and urgency with grips is just plain unfair: he immediately looks to smother with a collar tie or wrist control.
With ten minutes down, Yan went to work. He stands his ground more, fakes handfighting, and, the moment Aljo backs up, Yan makes him pay. But he never loses the same discipline or strategies he used earlier at any point. Instead, he took extra care to punish Aljo even worse.
If Sterling was going to inevitably dive in on him, then Yan would counter him with a strike, counter with a transition, or just reposition.
Not only was he turning every tactic against the American, he was punishing him in other ways. Sterling wanted to go for unorthodox strikes? Fine, his back just became an easier target where Yan could initiate grappling. Sterling still wanted to handfight? Just wait for it to finish or break it off and hit him first. Sterling wanted to get away? Body shots. He wanted to kick? That was accepted as an invitation to sweep him to the ground, where he’d beat Sterling on his own turf.
Ultimately, Sterling reached the point where his offensive potency had been heavily mitigated and used against him. He was only still there through grit alone as his own pace damaged him more than it made Yan blink. Only the subsequent illegal knee left a blemish upon what was otherwise a pitch-perfect performance.
I won’t mince words here: Disqualification or no, Petr Yan was not going to lose control of this fight barring a sigularly effective adjustment/momentum shift and that does not bode well for Aljo in the inevitable rematch. Aljamain Sterling is still an incredible contestant in his own right and he did many of the right things here — it just didn’t matter.
Cory Sandhagen: Breaking the Pace
A series of events transpired, leading to the recent Interim title bout between Yan and another contender, one Cory Sandhagen. The intrigue behind this fight was simple enough: whilst Sterling threw in high volume, his striking fundamentals left quite a bit to be desired. While Aldo’s mastery of positioning and striking variety was of the highest caliber, his limited gas tank gave him a time limit. Sandhagen brings something of his own from both worlds, with a personal twist. He is a psychotically durable, savvy technician who can build output over the course of a fight and was liable to offer Yan heavy resistance throughout the entire fight in ways others could not. That is, if anyone in the division was going to make Yan work hard in terms of the number of actions he had to perform, it was going to be Sandhagen.
Right away, Yan sets himself in the center to try and back Sandhagen up and take advantage of Sandhagen’s defensive ringcraft issues and take control of the initiative. However, he quickly encounters resistance from Cory’s active and educated lead hand. Sandhagen’s lead hand is incredibly versatile when it comes to playing with rhythm. Although he’ll throw with volume, he will draw attention and pair it with other weapons. In particular, Sandhagen loves to mix in the jab or handfight into a shift and craft entries. To throw opponents off, he’ll mix in kicks and punches at all levels. When it comes to touching his way around a guard and creating versatile offense, Sandhagen is among the best on the feet in MMA.
In particular, this sequence is impressive from Sandhagen because it shows how potent he is behind his lead hand on the front foot and at touching his way in, drawing counters, and then outpositioning someone with some of the most depectively tricky defense in MMA. When Sandhagen is allowed to work his A-game, he is an exceptionally capable fighter.
That said, Sandhagen’s lead hand in the orthodox stance is far superior and his ability to really build momentum is predicated upon being able to change the angles on an opponent.
You may have noticed Petr Yan spent the vast majority of the fight in southpaw. The reason why is simple enough: Yan wants to nullify Sandhagen’s orthodox jab as much as possible. This doesn’t fully shut Sandhagen down, though it does manage to force Sandhagen to have to adjust with a less preferred toolkit. In particular, watch how Yan uses the handfight to draw Sandhagen’s switches or kicks to parry or pull his leg back — or how he threatens the check hook to close the door. You wonder why Sandhagen keeps switching to southpaw himself? These are just a few of the many reasons why.
If Yan wasn’t able to handfight the lead hand, then he made it a priority to cut Sandhagen off as much as possible. Much can be made of Yan’s pressure footwork, but what stands out is its fundamental effortlessness. The best pressure fighters understand that the goal is to restrict space using small steps. Taking larger steps runs the risk of being caught with counters while you’re overpursuing. With adequate pressure, the other fighter will have to move far more on the backfoot — larger steps on the backfoot mean they aren’t able to plant their feet as easily and need to reposition constantly. And when they do reset, that cues the pressure fighter on the timing needed to punish them.
Yan’s footwork equally stood out when he was not able to pressure either. Whereas Yan could afford to allow Sterling to pressure him because the latter expended so much energy, Sandhagen offered far more threats if Yan allowed him to touch the guard. Moreover, Sandhagen would willingly engage in the handfight with Yan to create entries.
Therefore it became imperative that Yan’s offense blended into his defense and vice versa. Every time Cory attempted to step around Yan, Yan met it with a reset of his own. The moment the Sandman pushed forward or had the chance of gaining a superior angle, Yan not only pivoted, he was quick to cover up.
One of the Cory Sandhagen specials is that he’ll use his lead hand jab in tandem with shifts to step in and attack the body. It’s an effective move against Yan because it allows him to touch his way in. Yan adjusts with the aforementioned switch to southpaw, but uses switches of his own while closing the door with his counter punching to ensure Sandhagen can’t attain the superior angle.
But perhaps the most important thing Yan did was understand that he couldn’t simply just hide behind his guard until Sandhagen was finished with his combinations like he did versus Sterling. He had to pick his spots and fire back at the end of an exchange or when Sandhagen reset — a fine example of how you halt another fighter from taking the initiative away completely. If Sandhagen’s success was dictated by his ability to dictate engagements, then Yan reasoned that the engagements needed to be controlled; Sandhagen was going to work for them and, subsequently, that meant Yan had to as well, which put them on equal footing, with one small caveat.
What truly settled the fight that ensued was a difference in depth.
Despite being a well-school technician, Sandhagen’s weapons lacked the same cohesion that Yan’s did. In other words, Sandhagen’s offensive and defensive options, comparatively, didn’t meld together. This is why he had to keep a high pace and volume on the Russian to be effective. To his credit, he had the durability and meticulousness to read how to engage Yan constantly until the end, but it remains a fact that Petr Yan didn’t have to up his volume to control the fight to nearly the same extent as Sandhagen had to.
Instead, Yan’s control was established with his trademark: take what the opponent does and turn it into a strength. Sandhagen was crafting successes through the handfight? Then they would handfight, but only when Yan wanted to and on his terms.
Personally, I’d say this is exactly the point at which Yan took control of this fight. Sandhagen is trying to touch or handfight his way in and outpositioning someone who can pivot as efficiently as Yan doesn’t make this easier. Note Yan is handtrapping him at a distance to pick off Cory’s jabs and to predict his entries all while inching forward.
If Sandhagen initiated it, then Yan would break it off with a combination to make Sandhagen reset or simply handfight at a longer distance, where he could parry all of Cory’s attempts to start an entry or fake it to set up another strike. And while Sandhagen was focused on his entry point through the handfight, Yan would continue to make small steps forward — when it comes to recognizing the big picture of a fight, those little details matter.
As a result, Sandhagen found himself needing to try and turn Yan and, the moment he was on the move, the Russian was immediately on him, looking to maintain the pressure and now timing him on resets. Everytime Sandhagen tried to take a step, he found himself outpositioned by the economical steps and pivots of his opponent and would have to try again.
(Also, little comment on that uppercut counter to the frame: How many MMA fighters do you know can actually pivot off their rear foot?)
If he stopped trying to move, that was the trigger point for Yan to blitz in and fire.
What if Sandhagen stood his ground? Well, I remind you that Yan was already shutting down the jab, so he either did what he did earlier and repositioned himself or he took that as a chance to punish Sandhagen for trying to fight him.
Anyways, let’s use the knockdown as a good review point where a good deal of this comes together:
Yan has already established control of the handfight and forward pressure to keep Sandhagen on the move. As Sandhagen resets, Yan blitzes in (notice how he handtraps Sandhagen immediately). As Sandhagen tries to exchange back, Yan has already retracted his rear hand and closes the door with a check hook. Sandhagen has shifted into southpaw himself to try to touch his way in, switches back as Yan V-steps behind his guard, but it’s a trap:
A Yan favorite, intentionally showing a weakness to create a punishment. He will pretend to shell up to draw the body hook and then check hook counters immediately. He’ll do this with anything and everything at any point. Seeing as it doesn’t work but Sandhagen hasn’t backed out — why not steal something from the American’s playbook?
Sandhagen certainly never stopped trying and his potency alone meant that Yan could never take his own foot off the pedal, but he was rendered the less successful fighter at the end. Petr Yan was the more adaptable fighter that night and he put on such a disciplined demonstration of offense that remains a niche rarity in MMA that it deserves massive commendation.
Conclusion
In the beginning of this article, I had claimed that Yan is the best offensive fighter I’ve seen in Mixed Martial Arts. The bout with Sandhagen truly illustrates what an effective offensive MMA fighter looks like. Many of MMA’s premier offensive fighters have to rely upon their pace and aggression to keep their opponents pinned. That is, you’ll see them rely upon sheer activity and overwhelming offense. That isn’t to say that they can’t be defensive — it’s just that their most effective defense tended to be their best offense being too much for the other pugilists to handle. And they usually have had the same kryptonite: fighters who can match their pace, have tremendous offensive variety, have good cage generalship, or the power to make them back off.
Rafael dos Anjos was a fantastic cagecutter with legendary endurance. The moment he faces a willing technician, hitter, or wrestler who pressures him and whom he can’t outmuscle, he’s liable to be backed up consistently. And even his pressure, mitigated by the draining weight cut or not, found itself undone by the tricky outfighting game of Eddie Alvarez.
Justin Gaethje excels at punishing resets and his counterpunching off the high guard has left its mark on everyone he’s pursued. That said, he would fight at a pace he could not maintain without dealing enough damage to force a stoppage whilst taking an enormous amount of damage from fighters capable of rivaling him in a firefight, leading to fights that would often be decided on a knifepoint.
Max Holloway holds arguably the most versatile lead hand in the history of the sport and whose swarming, attritional pace and pocket accuracy is legendary*. However, the fact remains that Holloway, even with his improved cagecraft after losses to Poirier and Volkanovski, still can be caught on entries and exits and will rely upon his absurd durability and unrivaled precise shot selection to make ends meet when his tactics don’t. Moreover, Holloway is still incredibly reliant upon his lead hand to actually create his entries into the pocket and, if he can’t, he won’t be as overwhelming. His recent mixups with kicks off punches have enhanced his game, though Holloway is still more of a swarming threat than he is a pressure threat — and will still opt for pushing harder or reallocating his offense to get desired results, as brilliant and astute a fighter as he is.
*Author’s Note: I want to point out while I’m here that Max Holloway is genuinely one of the finest fighters I’ve ever seen in MMA and is one of the few that can actually have a claim to being the best in the sport right now (another being his current rival, Alexander Volkanovski). Furthermore, he is one of the only fighters who, despite my criticisms, is far savvier with his volume (namely his precision) than others and will actually have answers if his lead hand/other weapons is/are taken away. My point here is that Petr Yan is a better offensive fighter than Max Holloway in terms of actually being effective in his offensive (i.e. having defensive into offensive options, etc.) and not a better fighter than him overall (which is an entirely different sort of discussion). In terms of operating -around- his opponents through different angles and directions in longer exchanges, Holloway is still the best.
These are just some of the many gifted offensive fighters, but what separates Yan from them is his consistent, patient efficiency. Yan doesn’t need to press his physical advantages or operate at an otherworldly pace to take control of a fight. He certifiably can, but he has the technical acumen of a fighter who understands that tools and their use matter more than attributes — or rather, how to administer both to control the rhythm of a fight without compromising anything in the process.
This is how Petr Yan goes about doing his job. His offense and defense blend together with his in-fight methods to understand his opponent’s systemic intentions, and he allocates both his offense and defense to control, damage, and overwhelm the opposing fighter. When you combine that with a superlative eye for detail, a sadistic mean streak, and tremendous physicality and endurance — you have an absolute monster of a fighter to content with as he grows in strength with each passing minute.
In his last three fights, Petr Yan has encountered a fighter who may well have been the best fighter in the division if he was not around — and each rose to the occasion to try to get the better of him. And every individual success was stripped bare and thrown aside. If being able to do what Petr Yan has done to the likes of Jose Aldo, Aljamain Sterling, and Cory Sandhagen isn’t an accomplishment, then I don’t know what is. He might not hold the most accomplished resume the bantamweight division has had yet, but the roster is going to need an extraordinary contender to beat one of the most talented fighters to have ever competed in MMA, let alone any combat sport.