Yan’s improbable redemption earns him 2025’s Fighter of the Year award on the men’s side, while Valentina Shevchenko left no doubt on the women’s.
Sometimes context matters when discussing the Fighter of the Year, especially on the men’s side of the ledger for 2025. Petr Yan went 2-0 this past year, which might seem ordinary enough, yet when you consider how he got there it magnifies things a little bit. It’s not that people gave Yan up for dead after an 0-3 stretch in the bantamweight division he once ruled, it’s that we didn’t think about him anymore. Not in any serious light, anyway. The division belonged to Merab Dvalishvili, and that was that.
Yan found himself in the exact wrong playpen at the exact wrong moment in time.
So when he put together a quiet run to try and get back into title contention, people couldn’t help by do exactly as his name suggested. They yawned. A couple of nice wins over Song Yadong and Deiveson Figueiredo in 2024 set the table for his chance, and he seized it in Abu Dhabi this past summer by dominating Marcus McGhee over the course of three rounds. Because Merab had already cleaned out the division around him — and because Merab is a madman who wanted to break the UFC’s record by defending his title four times in a single year — Yan got the call for his rematch to close out 2025.
If we’re being honest, the title shot was perfunctory. Yan was serving a function for Merab to make some history, and the bandstand belonged to Georgia. This was a Dvalishvili celebration, and Yan was a willing enough fall guy. Why not? The first time they met in 2023, Merab dominated the action. Merab doubled Yan in strikes, scored 11 total takedowns and controlled Yan for nearly seven minutes of fight time.
See, this is how you steal the distinction of Fighter of the Year. You show up mid-verse as people are penning your eulogies and you shock the world. You put on a masterclass performance in which your every word, every action and every split decision loss is reexamined. When Yan talked about his compromised hand in the first fight, nobody paid it any mind. Yan remembered. And at UFC 323 he was the Count of Monte Cristo. He was vengeance, and he was vindication. No … he was a reckoning. He would not be moved from his moorings, nor rocked off his focus. He was rooted to the center of the earth.
Merab came at Yan with everything he had. He went for single legs and double legs, and he tried to stand and trade, yet he ended up eating shots throughout the five-round fight that turned his face to a pulp. The shots were spring-loaded with the strength of a man dedicated in his quest, a man who was never going to squander his second chance.
Yan not only prevented Merab from making history, but he also seized the title in dramatic fashion. Twenty-five minutes was all it took to change the fortunes of a division being held hostage through Merab’s reign, and when you topple a genuine giant in the industry like that, incredible things happen.
Namely, you can snatch Uncrowned’s Fighter of the Year award by throwing a monkey wrench in the machine.
2. Islam Makhachev
In a perfect world, Makhachev might’ve taken 2025's Fighter of the Year award purely on historical merit, as he defended his lightweight title one last time to kick off the year (at UFC 311 against Renato Moicano) and conquered the welterweight division toward its end. Hold up … that sentence doesn’t nearly convey the magnitude of his feat. Makhachev didn’t just edge out Jack Della Maddalena to become the latest two-division UFC champion, he ransacked and looted his human property and left him hobbling back to the drawing board wondering what hit him. It was an onslaught. For nearly 20 of the 25 minutes so cruelly assigned, he hammered "JDM" with ground-and-pound and rendered him helpless.
Makhachev left no doubt that he is the pound-for-pound king, and you get the sense that Makhachev will be showing up atop more FOTY lists as he gets comfortable at 170 pounds.
3. Merab Dvalishvili
It’s hard to fault Merab for shooting his shot, because greatness has never been a passive pursuit. We love fighters (and athletes) who risk it all to make some history, and that’s what Merab did in 2025.
He kept a preternatural pace, even though he was dealing with staph and hurt feelings to kick off the year against Umar Nurmagomedov. Fueled by Nurmagomedov's “disrespect,” Merab took him out behind the woodshed and gave him a beating at UFC 311. Little did we know he was just getting started. He made light work of Sean O’Malley in their rematch at UFC 316, bemoaning the fact that he finished him too soon (the submission came late in the third round, but Merab wasn’t done dominating yet). He turned Cory Sandhagen into some moon pale origami at UFC 320, and brushed his hands off afterward like it was nothing.
Maybe the fourth fight of the year was too much. That’s a lot of weight-cutting in a single year, and the tolls of so many high-profile fights and expectations is difficult to quantify. Big respect to Merab for shooting his shot, though. What a year.
4. Joshua Van
Tell you what, when Nietzsche was insisting to the boys at the bar that “he who would lean to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying,” he hadn’t met Joshua Van. Van was 23 years old for the bulk of 2025. His decision over Rei Tsuruya was modest enough, a nice step for the kid from Myanmar just trying to find his way through the hype phase. Then summer came, and boy, oh boy did he crank up the heat. In the span of 21 days Van took out Bruno Gustavo da Silva and Brandon Royval, the latter which was dubbed the Fight of the Year. He flew into flight, alright, punching his ticket for a title shot with a fearless show of daring and superior boxing skills.
Had he knocked out Alexandre Pantoja at UFC 323 to close out 2025 — or won another five-round war — Van would have likely been the unanimous Fighter of the Year. Yet because Pantoja was injured just 26 seconds in and therefore unable to continue, there’s unfinished business at flyweight. No matter what, though, Van made his case, and that was one hell of a year.
5. Michael Morales
Speaking of young guns, Michael Morales produced a fair amount of smoke at welterweight this year, too. He turned 26 years old in June, just a month after dusting Gilbert Burns in the first-round knockout at the APEX, and then made his case for a title shot by destroying Sean Brady at UFC 322 in New York. Two big victories against perennial contenders, all just as he’s reaching an age to legally rent a car.
Perhaps that is why the word “phenom” is being through around with Morales, who has miles of charisma to go along with terrifying punching power. He makes it look so easy. Now 19-0 as a pro fighter, and 7-0 in the UFC since coming in on the Contender Series, you get the feeling Morales will get a shot to bring the welterweight title home to Ecuador in the near future.
Uncrowned's voting breakdown for Men's Fighter of 2025:
Honorable mentions:
Jiri Prochazka
Reinier de Ridder
Usman Nurmagomedov
Benoit Saint-Denis
Women’s MMA Fighter of the Year 2025: Valentina Shevchenko
All that talk on the men’s side about bona-fides and blood-dimmed tides, and yet a rock-and-roll standard continues to belt out licks in the women’s ranks. It’s of course, Valentina Shevchenko. She turned 37 in March, well past the expiration date of greatness for ordinary competitors, which “The Bullet” most certainly is not. We began anticipating her “decline” a long time ago, which makes this dominant year she had that much more incredible.
Remember when Taila Santos took Shevchenko into the deeper waters back in 2022? Shevchenko survived with a skin-of-her-teeth split decision victory, yet we sensed the queen was slipping. We got confirmation, we assumed, when Alexa Grasso took her title in 2023, a neck crank submission that made for some improbable B-roll. That Shevchenko came back and put an exclamation mark on a three-fight series with Grasso didn’t exactly stir her public into religious shouts of a resurrection.
The champ kicked off her year by taking on the hungry French fighter, Manon Fiorot, a thankless task if there ever was one. Though Fiorot had gone to New Jersey and shut down the state’s darling Erin Blanchfield in what was a cold-blooded, beast-like flex, soft-cores didn’t pay much attention to Fiorot. The harder-cores? They knew what Shevchenko was up against, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
It wasn’t, yet it was because Shevchenko made it that way. She strafed Fiorot from distance and landed the biggest shots throughout, wearing down Fiorot over the course of the championship rounds. It wasn’t just perseverance; it was a statement. That reports of her demise were greatly exaggerated. That she was still there.
Still, people didn’t believe her as she headed into the “superfight” with straying strawweight champion, Zhang Weili. This would be the moment of truth. Zhang was considered the top pound-for-pound fighter in the women’s realm, and she was chasing some history. So what did Shevchenko do? She showed up to fight week wearing sunglasses. She entertained the doubts surrounding her the way you and I might entertain the idea of the tooth fairy with our children. She knew, of course, that there was no such thing as doubt. She rag-dolled Zhang for big portions of the fight, racking up over 13 minutes of control time. She suffocated the Chinese champ and shut down her every instinct. Zhang tried Plan B and Plan C, yet it didn’t matter. Shevchenko beat her over the head with the whole desperate alphabet.
At the end, she was still wearing that belt. The queen is still on her throne, and she’s the Fighter of the Year.
2. Kayla Harrison
It is true she fought just a single time in 2025, but it was gravid with meaning. Harrison had already accomplished just about everything a pro athlete in combat sports could. She’d been an Olympic gold medalist in judo. She’d won all the PFL’s titles and million-dollar prizes for years, like it was an annual tradition. She’d successfully made the UFC’s 135-pound threshold against all the scientific naysay that she couldn’t.
The only thing left for her was to win the women’s bantamweight title, which she did at UFC 316 in Newark against Julianna Peña. Harrison got Peña with a kimura at the tail end of the second round to finish out her bingo card of Worldly Accomplishments. Although, maybe finish is the wrong word. All roads have been leading to her showdown with the women’s GOAT, Amanda Nunes, which takes place at UFC 324 later this month. If she beats Nunes, there will literally be nothing left to accomplish.
3. Mackenzie Dern
There was a time, between 2021 and 2024, when Mackenzie Dern went 2-4 in the UFC, and all hopes of a title faded like an old black belt that’s been washed too many times.
Let her stand as a model of perseverance, then, because in 2025, Dern came all the way back. She was able to avenge an earlier loss against Amanda Ribas to kick off the year, and then make good on the defaulting title shot once Zhang Weili vacated her belt by moving up to flyweight. The Dern that beat Virna Jandiroba at UFC 321 was a far cry from the version we were watching against Amanda Cooper and Ashley Yoder all those years ago, when her stand-up looked like that of a baby giraffe’s.
Now Dern has pop in the jab and combinations at her disposal, all installed by her coach Jason Parillo, and her jiu-jitsu has evolved to become what it was for Demian Maia — that is, a glorious fallback option.
4. Liz Carmouche
Carmouche turned 41 in February, meaning her twilight run is full of smiling wonder. And she went a perfect 3-0 in 2025, navigating the PFL’s flyweight field and beating Ilara Joanne, Elora Dana and Jena Bishop to earn a nice pocket full of cash.
You can’t help but feel good for Carmouche, a relatively unsung women’s pioneer who has seen just about everything the fight game has to offer over the past 16 years. She is the only woman who can say she beat Valentina Shevchenko, stood across Ronda Rousey in the first-ever women’s title fight in the UFC, won the flyweight title in Bellator, and then won a title in the PFL.
There have been a million little details in between, but the fact that we’re still talking about her — and that she’s on the FOTY list for 2025 — is testament to just how dedicated she is (and has always been).
5. Seika Izawa
What’s that? Another perfect year for Seika Izawa, the supernova who proves that dynamite comes in small packages?
It’s hard to keep finding the superlatives, but Izawa just continues to rule the atomweight field in Japan. After punctuating her year with a guillotine submission of Rena Kubota at RIZIN's year-end show in Saitama to retain the super atomweight belt, the 28-year-old Izawa is now 18-0 as a pro. You’re not likely to see a lot of knockouts from Izawa (though her RIZIN debut in 2021 resulted in a TKO finish of Ayaka Hamasaki), but her submission skills are the stuff of legend. Ten of Izawa’s wins have come via subs, and her attacks can be rightly described as “hell unleashed.”
Will we ever see her compete stateside? She’d have to split the atom, but we know how explosive she can be.
Uncrowned's voting breakdown for Women's Fighter of 2025:
Honorable mentions:
Manon Fiorot
Zhang Weili
More from Uncrowned's 2025 MMA year-end review:
Category: General Sports
