Aiemann Zahabi picked a side for the UFC 333 co-main event and then kept the margin narrow. “I slightly favor Petr Yan to beat Merab,” the bantamweight told MMA Junkie. He put the odds at 55/45 and later in the same conversation stretched it to 60/40. Yan (20-5 MMA, 12-4 UFC) holds the belt he took from Merab Dvalishvili (21-2 MMA, 14-3 UFC) at UFC 323, and the trilogy goes down Oct. 24 at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi on Paramount+.
Zahabi offers two reasons for leaning Yan. One is about wrestling and one is about lifestyle. I think he lands on the right winner, and the wrestling reason is the one doing the work.
Start With the 49
The first fight, a March 2023 main event, is the one people cite when they say Dvalishvili owns this matchup. Look at the number underneath it. Dvalishvili shot 49 takedowns and finished 11. Yan stopped 38 of them, which puts Merab’s success rate a hair over 22 percent. He still won the decision because his whole system runs on volume. A failed shot still drains the other guy, still resets the exchange, still keeps the opponent from setting his feet to punch. That is real grappling, and I have zero patience for anyone who watched it and called it stalling. But a 22 percent conversion rate describes a fight where Yan was defending well for long stretches, and Yan has claimed a broken right hand hindered his performance that night.
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Zahabi builds on that. He said it won’t be as easy for Merab to take Yan down because Yan doesn’t have as much height, and he added that “Petr Yan has a better wrestling pedigree than Sean O’Malley, and has great takedowns of his own.” Zahabi just fought O’Malley, so that comparison comes from someone who has shared a cage with the long striker in question. A shorter opponent with a low base is a harder body to drag across the mat. A fighter with his own reactive shots also punishes the half-committed entries that pad Merab’s attempt count. If even a handful of those 38 stuffed takedowns turn into Yan finishing on top, the scoring picture of this trilogy looks very different from 2023.
The Softer Argument
Zahabi’s other reason is focus. He said Yan “just trains,” spending his time in Thailand or Russia, and he contrasted that with fighters who travel to events to make content for social media. On Dvalishvili specifically, he said: “When he went four times in a year I was thinking he was on his way to being a GSP. But now he’s doing a lot of other things.”
This is where I get off the train. Four title fights in 2025 is an absurd workload, and a fighter who came through that schedule has earned the benefit of the doubt on conditioning. Cardio is Dvalishvili’s signature, and Arab News ran his own words in its headline: he’s “ready for a 25-minute war.” Videos don’t get scored. Whether Yan’s hips are still there in Round 4 when the 30th shot arrives does. Zahabi can’t see inside Dvalishvili’s camp any more than I can, and he conceded the uncertainty himself: “There’s no for sure.”
The fairest version of his point is a different kind of fatigue. Four title fights means a lot of hard camps stacked on top of each other, and Dvalishvili admitted he was humbled after UFC 323. Whether that humbling produces a genuine adjustment between fights or a hangover is what decides this one. I love a fighter who comes back with something new, and Merab has the wrestling vocabulary to do it. He’ll need a better entry than whatever produced 38 misses.
What’s Riding on It for Zahabi
Zahabi (14-3 MMA, 8-3 UFC) has a personal stake here. He’s coming off a stoppage loss to O’Malley at UFC Freedom 250, and he said that earlier in the year a win in that fight would have put him across from one of these two. Now he’s waiting on his assignment like the rest of the division, and he said the result will set the tone for the matchups of 2027. His read on the board: a Yan win likely sets up O’Malley, while a Dvalishvili win probably means Song gets the next title shot and O’Malley gets Talbott.
My pick is Yan by decision, and the travel schedule has nothing to do with it. Dvalishvili needs a much better conversion rate than 11 of 49 against the man holding the belt, and I haven’t seen where that improvement comes from. We find out Oct. 24 in Abu Dhabi.
