Petr Yan Would Move Up to 145 but Will Not Fight Alexander Volkanovski
Petr Yan was offered a choice between a flyweight champion coming up and a second belt of his own. He did not take the first one. Moving up sounded better, until the man holding 145 pounds turned out to be a friend.
“You know, if someone’s gonna move up and challenge me, you know, it’s maybe a question for them, not for me,” Yan said. “But, personally for myself, moving up, it sounds interesting too, some way in the future, yeah.”
The question came from Full Violence. Would he rather fight Joshua Van coming up for the bantamweight belt, or go up himself for double-champion status?
Yan’s first word was no. The rest of the answer put the move-up on the challenger, then left the door open for himself later.
He closed it on the current featherweight champion. “Yeah, just 145 champ is my friend Alex Volkanovski, so I don’t wanna beat him up.”
The interviewer filled in the condition. Wait until he retires. Yan said he got it.
Alexander Volkanovski is the man in the way of that interest. He is the UFC featherweight champion again, 28-4, and he tied Jose Aldo’s record of eight title wins in the division when he beat Diego Lopes at UFC 325 in Sydney.
His next defense is already booked. He meets unbeaten Movsar Evloev in the main event of UFC 333 on October 24.
Yan is on the same card, and he is not talking about 145 as a plan for that night. He is the two-time bantamweight champion, 20-5, and he is defending against Merab Dvalishvili in their trilogy.
Yan took the belt back from Dvalishvili by unanimous decision at UFC 323, then had lower-back surgery in January and missed the first three quarters of 2026. October 24 is the first defense of the second reign.
Van is the other name in the hypothetical. He is the flyweight champion, and the question was about him moving up to 135, not about Yan dropping to 125.
Yan did not rank that fight. He treated a smaller champion chasing his belt as someone else’s decision. A move of his own, he said, could be interesting later.
The friendship line is the limit on later. Yan and Volkanovski have been linked for years as training partners and as the two best smaller men of their era, and Yan has never framed a fight with him as a goal.
Saying he does not want to beat him up is not a ranking. It is a no, with a retirement attached by the interviewer and accepted in the reply.
Nothing in the sit-down changes the October card. Yan still has to get through Dvalishvili, who beat him in 2023 and lost the rematch.
Volkanovski still has to get through Evloev, who is 20-0 and built to wrestle. A double-champion run only exists if both keep their belts and Volkanovski is no longer the man at 145.
Yan has already said the current bantamweight contenders do not impress him, and that he will fight whoever the UFC puts next after Dvalishvili. Van coming up would be that kind of assignment. A move to featherweight would be his. He left one of those open. He took the other off the table for as long as his friend holds the belt.
