“48-47 Yan? Nooo. What are you saying?”
That was Ilia Topuria’s reaction when the cards were read after Merab Dvalishvili’s loss to Petr Yan in the UFC 333 co-main event on Oct. 24, in a clip Championship Rounds posted to X. It’s an honest reaction from a guy watching his countryman come up one round short in a fight that could have tipped either way.
The official result: Yan by unanimous decision, 48-47 on all three cards, retaining the bantamweight title, as the UFC announced on X. Three identical 48-47 cards means every judge gave Yan three rounds and Dvalishvili two. That’s about as thin as a unanimous decision gets, and one swing round on one card turns it into a split. UFCStats added fuel by posting a side-by-side of Yan’s output in Rounds 1 and 2 against Rounds 3, 4 and 5, which is the kind of breakdown people post when a fight looks like two different fights depending on when you tuned in.
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Topuria knows what it’s like to be on top. He’s the former UFC featherweight and lightweight champion, the first Georgian and Spanish fighter to win UFC gold, and sits at 17-1. He’s No. 3 in Knockout Daily’s lightweight rankings. His last fight was June 14, 2026, so he’s been watching from the outside for a while.
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Dvalishvili’s résumé is why the loss stings for that corner of the sport. He’s the first Georgian-born champion in UFC history, he put together a 14-fight win streak (fourth longest ever in the promotion) that ran through José Aldo, Henry Cejudo, Sean O’Malley and Yan himself, and his 124 successful takedowns are the most anyone has landed in the UFC. Even after Saturday he’s 21-6 and No. 2 at bantamweight in our rankings. He doesn’t need a long rebuild. He needs a rematch, and the margin on the scorecards gives his side a decent argument for one.
Yan, meanwhile, posed for a photo with Alexander Volkanovski after both won on the card, per Championship Rounds. Smart money says the next time those two Georgian camps start lobbying, the pitch to the UFC will start with three cards reading 48-47.
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