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Who is Yana Kunitskaya dating? UFC fighter became mom before finding true love

Yana Kunitskaya kick-started her MMA career in the year 2009 but played her first promotional UFC match in 2018

With more than 20 events down, 2021 has surely proved to be a stellar one when it comes to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and with the latest event dubbed UFC 264, the fans are hyped to witness the showdown between the headliners Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier. However, women UFC fighters namely Yana Kunitskaya and Irene Aldana are also getting equal attention for their much-awaited face-off on July 10 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Yana Kunitskaya has already won two straight and four of her last five UFC bouts to jump onto number five in the rankings. Kunitskaya, unfortunately, suffered a TKO loss to Aspen Ladd in December 2019 but the mixed martial artist then scored back-to-back wins over Ketlen Vieira and Julija Stoliarenko. The chances of Yana Kunitskaya winning the UFC world title for the second time will increase if she wins the upcoming against Aldana. Apart from her professional life, Kunitskaya also manages to make news for her love life.
 
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Who is Yana Kunitskaya?

Yana Kunitskaya is a Russian mixed martial artist in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). She is currently ranked number five in the UFC women's bantamweight rankings. Kunitskaya was born to a professional gymnast mother and father, who was a professional skier. She got involved in martial arts at a very young age and won several tournaments against both girls and boys with many fights ending in knockouts.  

She kick-started her MMA career in the year 2009 but played her first promotional UFC match in 2018.  The 31-year-old, unfortunately, suffered a TKO loss in the very first round in her debut against Cris Cyborg. Nicknamed as the “Foxy”, the Russian fighter later participated in four UFC fights winning three of them.  The professional fighter is a former Invicta FC Bantamweight champion and is the 2007 Russian Taekwondo and 2011 Russian Muay Thai Champion. 

Who is Yana Kunitskaya dating?

If we shed light on her love life, Yana Kunitskaya is currently engaged to UFC fighter Thiago Santos since December 2020. The power couple started dating in 2019 and announced their engagement on Instagram a year later. Santos is considered to be one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time. He has been a professional competitor since 2010 and he stepped into the UFC after competing on The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 2. The 37-year-old Brazilian mixed martial artist currently stands at number four in the UFC light heavyweight rankings. The couple has not shed any details on their marriage. The duo also has a son together. They had announced their pregnancy in April 2020. However, Kunitskaya gave birth to her first child in 2013 and retired for a brief period of time but made a comeback to the ring after three years.

Yana Kunitskaya was rumored to be dating another individual before falling in love with Thiago Santos. However, there are no substantial details regarding the same. Talking about Kunitskaya and Santos, the power couple is often spotted training together. Speaking about the same, Santos had earlier said, as reported by SportsKeeda, “She is a very hard-working girl who wants you to help. She likes to learn, listens to you, accepts what you say, understands, and is very dedicated. I have never seen a girl train as much as she does. Pleased to help.”  

Talking about supporting each other, Kunitskaya in a video earlier stated, “We’re both in the same routine. We both need to eat you know healthy focusing fights and camp. Some minuses that we can’t like support each other like in some moments because we need focus in our fights but we do our best.”  She added, “We support each other trying to do camp as smooth as it can be and good thing that after fights we can you know rest a little enjoy life traveling.”