Yana Santos - TheSportsDB.com

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Home / Sport / Fighting / UFC / UFC Womens / Yana Santos

Name
Yana Santos

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Born
1989 (34 years old)

Birth Place

Murmansk, Russia

Position
Fighter

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UFC Womens

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UFC

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Yana Santos (née Kunitskaya; born November 11, 1989) is a Russian mixed martial artist competing in the bantamweight division in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). As of September 19, 2022, she is #6 in the UFC women's bantamweight rankings.
Yana Santos was born in 1989, in the city of Murmansk, Murmansk Oblast, in northwestern Russia. Her mother, Olga Kunitskaya, was a professional gymnast and her father, Joseph, was a professional skier. She has a younger sister, Victoria. Yana became involved in martial arts early in her childhood, starting with taekwondo at preschool age, and won numerous tournaments among both girls and boys, with many fights ending in knockouts. At 12 years old, she began competing in hand-to-hand combat (Russian: рукопашный бой), participating in a large number of fights without suffering a defeat. When she was 16 years old, Santos went to live and study in St. Petersburg, and entered the SPGUFK team at Lesgaft National State University of Physical Education, Sport and Health, Department of Boxing. At age 18, she started practicing mixed martial arts (MMA).
On August 9, 2012, Santos announced that she was pregnant with her first child. In August 2013, she announced the end of her sports career and her transition to coaching, but she came out of retirement three years later. She then signed a contract with the Invicta Fighting Championships (IFC or Invicta FC) in which only females compete.
Santos is married to former UFC and current Professional Fighters League (PFL) fighter Thiago Santos. She has a son from a previous relationship. The pair got engaged in December 2020. Santos announced on August 16, 2021, that the couple was expecting their first child together, leading to some fans speculating that Santos was pregnant during her fight against Irene Aldana, which had taken place just a month before, though Santos denied these claims, and female fighters in Nevada, where the fight took place, are administered pregnancy tests prior to each fight as part of the standard medical screening.