Merab Dvalishvili lost the bantamweight title to Petr Yan at UFC 323, and now he’s talking about why. Yahoo Sports ran an exclusive this week built around Dvalishvili revealing the mistake that cost him against Yan. The framing matters. Fighters who lose a belt usually reach for something outside themselves first, like the judges, the cut or an injury nobody heard about in camp. Pointing at your own error is a rarer move. In my experience it’s also the one that tends to come before a better second fight.
The circulating headline doesn’t spell out which exchange or which round he’s talking about, so I’m not going to fill that in for him. The more useful question is why this admission matters right now and why the bantamweight calendar is working against him.
Yan holds the real thing
The belt Yan carries is lineal, and that counts for more than usual at the moment. A Yahoo Sports breakdown by Kshitiz Kumar Singh of Lastwordonsports.com counted the UFC’s 11 current champions and found that five of them won gold without beating the person who held it before them. Volkanovski, Natalia Silva, Ciryl Gane, Carlos Ulberg and Mackenzie Dern all won vacant belts or were elevated. Yan is on the other list, one of six champions who took the title straight from the previous holder, and the man he took it from was Dvalishvili.
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Ariel Helwani made the case for why that matters on X on October 5, writing that “you should have to beat the champ to become the champ.” That logic cuts both ways for Dvalishvili. Yan’s reign has full legitimacy because he went through Merab. If Merab wants his own claim back with the same weight, he has to go through Yan. Waiting for a vacancy won’t give him that.
That’s why naming the mistake is the right opening move. A former champion who says he lost to a better man has no rematch pitch. A former champion who says he lost because of something specific and fixable is telling matchmakers the second fight would be different. I love fighters who make real adjustments, and an adjustment starts with a diagnosis said out loud.
The line is moving without him
Yan’s next fight is set for UFC 333, and the division is already arranging itself around the result. Another Yahoo Sports piece noted that Sean O’Malley revealed private voice notes with Yan and admitted he will “duck” Payton Talbott if Yan wins at UFC 333. However you read O’Malley’s reasoning, it tells you contenders are already planning their next moves around a Yan victory, and none of that planning has Dvalishvili’s name on it.
There’s more traffic too. Marcus McGhee (12-2) stopped Anthony Romero with a first-round TKO at UFC 332, MMA Fighting reported, his second straight win and his first stoppage since 2024. McGhee already lost a decision to Yan in July 2025, so he’d be another rematch, but he’s winning now and he’s active. A former champion coming off a loss can watch the queue fill up fast while he’s still explaining what went wrong.
The 145 problem
This is the part that should worry the Dvalishvili camp most. MMA Fighting’s Morning Report flagged a video in which Yan says he wants to move up after Volk is gone. Alexander Volkanovski currently holds featherweight gold, has won 25 of his last 28 fights and has competed in 11 straight UFC title fights. He beat Diego Lopes for the vacant belt at UFC 314 and then beat Lopes again at UFC 325. Yan isn’t calling him out. He’s waiting him out.
Follow that thread to its end. If Volkanovski steps away and Yan heads to 145, the bantamweight title probably goes vacant, and the division ends up on the wrong side of Singh’s list. Dvalishvili could win that belt back in a vacant title fight, and it would be a real championship. It would also be exactly the kind of title Helwani was complaining about, won without beating the man who took it from him.
So the window for a clean rematch is open, but it depends on two things Dvalishvili can’t control: Yan winning at UFC 333 and Yan staying at 135 long enough to defend against him. The Yahoo Sports interview is the first piece of a campaign whether he frames it that way or not. He’s told the public he knows what went wrong. The next step is convincing the UFC that the fix makes Yan vs. Dvalishvili 2 a different fight and more than a replay.
My pick, if Merab gets his rematch before Yan packs for featherweight: he takes the belt back, because a fighter who can name his own mistake usually stops making it.
