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Merry Christmas everyone! As the year winds down and the UFC layoff continues, it’s a perfect time to look back over the most eventful moments of 2025. Specifically, we’ll be talking about the fighters who defined 2025. The criteria here are obvious: winning multiple times counts for something, but the quality of the competition and […]

Let’s check out 2025’s “Fighters of the Year.”

5. Petr Yan

Petr Yan’s five-round demolition job of “The Machine” is the single best performance of the year, bar none. That’s not an article I’m responsible for, but I thought I would throw y’all a freebie!

Unsurprisingly, it’s also what carries him onto this list. A clear-cut decision win over the formerly undefeated Marcus McGhee is a nice feather in the “No Mercy” cap, but this is all about his UFC 323 revenge over Merab. Yan absolutely beat the brakes off an incredibly dominant champion, which is in itself a remarkable accomplishment. What’s so astounding here, however, is how comprehensively Yan defeated Dvalishvili, particularly considering the shoe was very much on the other foot in their first fight. He didn’t just sprawl-and-brawl: Yan pummeled Dvalishvili in the boxing range, the clinch, at distance with liver kicks, and consistently outwrestled him even late in the fight.

It’s storybook stuff.

Dethroning Merab is a return to the greatness Yan’s first title reign promised but didn’t live up to. At his best, the Russian is one of the greatest technical talents we’ve ever seen, and it’s a joy to watch “No Mercy” operate when he’s zoned in. If he can maintain that level into 2026, there are plenty of worthy challenges remaining that could push him to the No. 1 spot.

4. Islam Makhachev

In a way, Makhachev’s year began with disappointment. The Russian was supposed to rematch Arman Tsarukyan in what would have been a serious challenge to his Lightweight title. Defeating a prime Tsarukyan would have been the best defense of his Lightweight title yet, but a last-second Tsarukyan “back injury” robbed him of the opportunity.

Instead, he easily submitted Renato Moicano inside a round for his fourth Lightweight title defense. It was a great bit of jiu-jitsu, but the win was an unfortunate continuation of the odd trend of Makhachev defending against less-than-ideal competition through no real fault of his own.

There are no such criticisms to be made about Jack Della Maddalena as an opponent. Against a fresh new champion at the height of his powers, Makhachev made it look elementary. He outwrestled “JDM” with absolute ease and shut down the knockout artist’s formidable scrambling game. It wasn’t competitive for more than a handful of seconds, even if the fight was a little slow overall.

It was an effortless rise to double champion status.

Makhachev’s legacy continued to grow massively in 2025, perhaps finally surpassing his mentor Khabib. In terms of accomplishments, Makhachev is undeniably greater than his dear friend and coach, even if he lacks that same unstoppable aura of “The Eagle.”

3. Joshua Van

In the span of 12 months, Van rose from unranked Flyweight prospect to UFC champion. Taking advantage of that youthful energy, he fought four times and didn’t lose a single time. Were it not for the unfortunate circumstances of his Alexandre Pantoja win, he would be the clear-cut “Fighter of the Year.“

What’s really neat here is that Van’s streak actually started strong. He beat Rei Tsuruya — a previously undefeated 23-year-old wrestling ace — from pillar-to-post, demonstrating clear improvements to his defensive grappling. Then, he broke into the rankings by smashing up Bruno Silva, a physical and experienced veteran. Van showed the clear difference between decent MMA power punching and true boxing, battering the Brazilian with lovely counters and combinations en route to a third-round knockout win.

The best win of Van’s 2025 was undoubtedly his 15-minute war with Brandon Royval. I wrote extensively about that scrap in the “Fights of the Year” article, but the long and short of it is that it was incredibly fun. Van concluded the back-and-forth war with a decisive knockdown, derailing the former title challenger and setting up his own shot at gold.

How much can we really weigh the Pantoja victory? Van walks away champion, and that does mean something. For his confidence and bank account, it means a whole lot. If Van had won by checking a kick and snapping Pantoja’s shin, it would be a more meaningful win, but the fact is that Pantoja successfully kicked Van in the dome and then fell awkwardly. Van’s push/elevation of the kick affected the fall, but this was not a moment of slick defense creating a finish.

These things happen in MMA. Van still went from unranked to champion, and he enters 2026 with serious momentum behind him on account of a stellar year. Give the man his due!

2. Valentina Shevchenko

Valentina Shevchenko fights can be very boring, and for this reason, she doesn’t always get the respect she deserves.

Let’s be honest here: “Bullet” is well past her prime. She’s 37 years old at 125-pounds and started fighting professionally 22 years ago. Nobody has any real idea just how many times she has competed in Muay Thai, kickboxing, and various smokers around the globe, but she’s been fighting grown women since she was a teenager.

For her to win the Alexa Grasso trilogy last year was a remarkable middle finger to Father Time, but her 2025 efforts surpass that victory. Manon Fiorot, Shevchenko’s first opponent of the year, is very clearly the next best woman at 125-pounds right now. She beat up Erin Blanchfield with relative ease to earn the title shot, and after losing to Shevchenko, rebounded with a 36-second knockout win over the formerly surging contender Jasmine Jasudavicius.

“The Beast” is as legit as they come at Flyweight, yet Shevchenko beat her clearly. It wasn’t easy, but Shevchenko nearly knocked her out early and otherwise wrestled her way to victory. In and of itself, it’s a very comparable win to Alexander Volkanovski’s title win over Diego Lopes — an older champion turning back the clock to diffuse a more physically gifted rising talent.

Unlike “The Great,” that’s not the extent of Shevchenko’s 2025 resume. She returned to action six months later and outclassed Strawweight queen Zhang Weili, a woman who has been otherwise untouchable for the last three years. Yes, Shevchenko was defending her belt against a woman fighting up in hopes to claim a second title, but does that mean the win doesn’t count? We just talked about Islam’s domination of “JDM” — the lighter champion has won plenty of times throughout promotional history.

Weili had nothing for Shevchenko. She couldn’t find her way into the boxing range without eating hard counter punches, winced at every left kick that landed, and crumbled from a knee to the belly. Any time Shevchenko truly committed to her wrestling, she was able to ground and contain Weili, a task Olympic wrestling hopeful Tatiana Suarez utterly failed to accomplish earlier this very year.

That’s a pair of excellent title defenses and strong additions to her legacy well beyond Shevchenko’s best-by date. Fights don’t have to be fun to be impactful, and in 2025, Shevchenko considerably strengthened her argument as the greatest female fighter of all time.

1. Merab Dvalishvili

Despite coming up short at the 11th hour versus Petr Yan (see above), I still believe Dvalishvili deserves the top spot for his audacious approach to being a UFC champion.

First and foremost, Dvalishvili handed Umar Nurmagomedov his first professional loss. Not only is that a remarkable accomplishment in its own right — those Nurmagomedovs don’t lose very often, in case you hadn’t noticed — but Dvalishvili sort of rushed himself into the fight and showed up with suboptimal preparation. Still, he secured the hard-fought win over a name that is likely to age very well in the coming decade.

Next up, Dvalishvili outclassed Sean O’Malley. This rematch didn’t need to happen, but it served as a demonstration of improvement. Compared to the first fight, “The Machine” landed more punches, scored takedowns more easily, barely got hit, and even secured the submission finish.

Dvalishvili’s clash with Cory Sandhagen was his third title defense of the year and nearly secured him his first knockout win. Sandhagen started very strong and seemed to have the answers to the Dvalishvili puzzle until a swarm of power punches almost shut off the lights entirely. Sandhagen survived, but the damage was done: Dvalishvili was back in his cycle of control, and escape is impossible.

By winning three title fights against Top Five opposition, Dvalishvili had already done more than anyone else on this list. Rather than enjoy his success, he gambled it for a historical fourth fight, and it backfired. I have no doubt that Dvalishvili’s hyperactivity contributed to his loss to Yan. I’m not saying at all that it was the deciding factor, only that Dvalishvili didn’t give himself the best possible chance at victory.

It also doesn’t hurt that Yan vs. Dvalishvili 2 was also incredibly fun, an undeniable display of heart on the Dvalishvili side of the equation. Ultimately, Dvalishvili deserves respect for the attempt as well as credit for the work already done, and he’s still your “Fighter of the Year.”