Merab Dvalishvili still has respect for Petr Yan’s fighting. He just doesn’t like the guy. Ahead of their bantamweight title trilogy at UFC 333, the Georgian told MMA Junkie that he finds Yan rude as a person, and that a third win over him would fix that problem on its own.
“I need to win against him and then he will be humbled,” Dvalishvili said. “That’s what he needs, I believe.”
The fight goes down Oct. 24 at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi as the co-main event, streaming on Paramount+. Yan (20-5 MMA, 12-4 UFC) defends the 135-pound belt he took from Dvalishvili (21-2 MMA, 14-3 UFC) at UFC 323 last December. That loss ended a title run in which Dvalishvili had stacked three successful defenses inside a single year. The rivalry is now 1-1, and his read on it is blunt. To him, both fights were blowouts, just in opposite directions.
“The first fight was one-sided, the second fight was one-sided, and now we all deserve to find out who’s really the best,” he said.
The Press Conference Jabs
Yan went after Dvalishvili at the pre-fight press conference, and the challenger didn’t pretend otherwise.
“Yeah, he made fun of me at the press conference. Yeah, that’s normal from him, and I’m not surprised,” he said.
He was careful to split the man from the fighter, too. He said he respects Yan as a family man, a father of two, and called him a good fighter, but said he was never a fan of Yan as a person. He framed the whole thing as competition. He wants to beat the best guy in the division, and right now that’s the guy holding his old belt.
The two have spent 50 minutes in the cage together, and Dvalishvili doesn’t think that tape tells him much about Round 1 next Saturday.
“Even when first time and the second fight, it was two different results because it was two different days, two different mindsets,” he said.
He still called himself very confident and very comfortable about winning.
He’s also come into camp fresh, per MMA Junkie, though he hasn’t exactly been sitting on a couch. He’s been grappling under the Real American Freestyle banner, beating Henry Cejudo by decision on the mats in July before Cejudo evened that series at 1-1. Cejudo has floated a third wrestling match between them.
UFC 333’s main event features Alexander Volkanovski defending the featherweight title against unbeaten Movsar Evloev (20-0), so Abu Dhabi gets two belts on the line in one night.
My take: Yan doesn’t need to be likable for this one to be great. Two fights in, these guys have produced a pair of lopsided results that pointed in opposite directions, which tells me the third fight gets decided by whoever imposes their pace first. If Dvalishvili gets his relentless wrestling volume going early, Yan gets dragged into deep water for 25 minutes. If Yan’s timing is sharp enough to make every level change cost something, the champ walks out of Etihad Arena with the belt, and his trash talk stays exactly as loud as it is right now.
