If Sean O’Malley wants to “chill” on the sidelines while Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili settle their trilogy, a strategy that appears to have triggered this former two-division champion, then “Suga” could be out of action until early 2027.
That’s because the 32 year-old Yan just underwent major back surgery and told his Instagram followers that he was under anesthesia for nine hours.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is, Yan (20-5) expects to recover within a couple of months. That would put his first
training camp at or near the start of summer with a late fall title defense — assuming his recovery goes according to plan. If not, we could be looking at another interim title.
Let’s hope not.
There’s also the chance that UFC convinces O’Malley to fight fellow contenders Umar Nurmagomedov or Cory Sandhagen while Yan and Dvalishvili settle their differences, which may require the promotion to renegotiate with the bean-counting O’Malley.
Time will tell.
