Merab Dvalishvili has built a career on outlasting people, on shooting a seventh and eighth and ninth time until the other man’s legs finally stop answering. That makes his latest admission land a little harder. In comments that spread across r/MMA on Tuesday, the Georgian said that once his takedowns stopped working in the second round of his rematch with Petr Yan, he understood he wasn’t going to win, and he chose to spend the rest of the fight enjoying himself.
“In the second round I tried to take Yan down and when I couldn’t I said ‘f*ck what can I do now’. After that I was just going to have fun and enjoy the fight, I realised that I wasn’t going to win so I just wanted to enjoy it.”
Fighters rarely say this kind of thing out loud, and almost never with a third fight a week and a half away. Dvalishvili meets Yan again at UFC 333 on Oct. 24 in Abu Dhabi, on a card headlined by Alexander Volkanovski defending the featherweight title against Movsar Evloev.
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Where things stand
Yan holds the bantamweight championship. Dvalishvili sits at No. 1 in the UFC Meta Rankings, ahead of Song Yadong at No. 2 and Sean O’Malley at No. 3, so there’s no argument about whether he’s earned the trip back. Yahoo Sports’ weekly power rankings slotted him fourth this week, noting that plenty of people have been waiting for him to win his belt back. The same column made the obvious tactical point. If Dvalishvili wants the title again, he’ll need to get Yan down more often than he did last time.
There’s a second Dvalishvili storyline running alongside this one. MMA Sucka published a piece headlined around Dvalishvili explaining why he will arrive later to UFC 333. The reasoning behind that plan wasn’t included in the material available at publication, so how late he’s arriving and why are still open questions for now.
The rest of the division will be watching Abu Dhabi closely. O’Malley and Song are both stacked behind Dvalishvili in the rankings, and a decisive result either way would reshape the line at 135 pounds heading into 2027.
Quick take
I like this quote more than I probably should. The temptation after a loss is to talk about the cut, the camp, the judges, anything except the moment you realized your best weapon wasn’t working. Dvalishvili named that moment precisely: Round 2, a takedown that didn’t land, a single profane question to himself. A man who can locate the exact second a fight slipped away has already done half the film study. The other half is finding an answer to Yan’s takedown defense, because the first two fights told him what happens when he doesn’t have one. He gets his chance to show he found it on Oct. 24.
