Henry Cejudo has spent a good chunk of the last few years either losing to Merab Dvalishvili or wrestling him. So when Cejudo starts handing out crowns to that guy, I listen. Then I check his pockets.
In an interview with MMA Junkie ahead of UFC 333, Cejudo said that if Dvalishvili takes the bantamweight title back from Petr Yan on Oct. 24 at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, the GOAT debate at 135 pounds is over. His exact words were that Merab “just becomes the GOAT,” and he didn’t hedge it one bit.
I think he’s right. And the reasons go a lot deeper than a long win streak.
The case Cejudo is making
Cejudo’s logic is simple. “He beat everybody from me to Yan and just everybody,” he said. “You’ve got to give it to him.” That concession carries weight coming from a former two-division champion and Olympic gold medalist who lost a unanimous decision to Dvalishvili in February 2024. Fighters don’t usually volunteer the guy who beat them for the GOAT spot.
He was a lot colder on Yan. Cejudo noted that the current champ “still hasn’t defended his title, so that’s hard,” and said he’d rank Aljamain Sterling ahead of him. That’s a rough way to talk about the guy holding the belt, but it’s fair. One title win is a highlight. A run of them is a legacy.
Why the trilogy carries this much weight
The numbers first. Dvalishvili is 21-3 overall and 14-3 in the UFC. Yan is 20-5 and 12-4. Merab won their first fight by dominant unanimous decision. Yan took the rematch at UFC 323 in December, also by unanimous decision, reclaiming the belt and snapping Merab’s 14-fight winning streak.
That loss is the whole reason this fight matters so much. A 14-fight streak gets you on the shortlist. Losing the belt and then ripping it right back from the man who took it, in a trilogy decider, ends arguments at the bar. Champions who lose and fade get remembered as great. Champions who lose and go back to settle it get remembered as the guy.
And the December loss came with an asterisk that Merab wrote himself. He was chasing four title defenses inside the 2025 calendar year, and Yan was fight number four. Merab lost in fairly one-sided fashion. I love the ambition, because I can’t stand champions who sit on belts and wait for the perfect matchup. But stacking four title fights into one year and expecting your engine to show up fresh against Petr Yan? That’s ordering the 72-ounce steak challenge and acting shocked when you can’t finish the plate.
Now he’s had nearly 11 months to rest and recover. We have never seen that version of Merab against Yan.
The wrestling stat that should scare Yan
The number that jumps off the page is two takedowns on 29 attempts in the rematch. For Dvalishvili, whose entire career is built on wrestling, that’s absurd. That’s a guy who kept showing up to the door and couldn’t find the key.
Cejudo thinks he knows why it will be different this time. He and Merab have wrestled twice under the Real American Freestyle banner and split those matches, and Cejudo says the strict wrestling training made Dvalishvili “so much better.” He also told Merab to keep training the same way he did for that first match. His prediction for UFC 333 was blunt: “I think Merab’s going to kill him, man.”
One caveat. Cejudo is far from a neutral observer. He’s a former Merab opponent and a current wrestling rival, and you could argue it helps him if the man who beat him ends up with the GOAT tag. But somebody who has gone live with Dvalishvili twice is in a better position than any of us to judge how those shots look right now.
Where I land
If Merab wins, give it to him. Win the first fight clean, lose the belt at the tail end of a schedule nobody sane would attempt, then come back rested and take it from the man who beat you. That’s a complete resume, and it answers the only real hole in his case.
If Yan wins, he goes up 2-1 in the series, he gets the first title defense Cejudo says he’s missing, and the argument against him evaporates overnight. Then Yan’s the one holding the claim, and Cejudo has some explaining to do.
That’s what makes Oct. 24 so good. The belt and the GOAT debate get decided in the same fight. Two takedowns on 29 attempts cost Merab in December. If that number flips in Abu Dhabi, Cejudo gets to say he called it.
