Merab Dvalishvili didn’t waste words when he squared up with Petr Yan this week. “Talk now, enjoy. Saturday I will show you. I will eat you,” he told Yan during their face off, according to a clip Championship Rounds posted on X.
That line landed around the same time as a stranger piece of fight-week news. MMA Sucka reported that fans reacted loudly after learning Dvalishvili refused nose surgery before the Yan fight. The details of the injury and who recommended the procedure haven’t been made public in anything we’ve seen, so treat the surgery story as a report for now. What is confirmed is that Dvalishvili is still on the card. Both men weighed in at 135 pounds Friday, making the UFC 333 co-main event official.
Why it matters
This is the third time these two meet, and Championship Rounds billed Friday’s staredown as their final face off. Yan comes in as the No. 1 bantamweight in Knockout Daily’s rankings, at 20-5, and holds the UFC title for the second time. He sits at No. 4 in the UFC’s pound-for-pound list. Dvalishvili is No. 2 at 21-5, a former champion and No. 9 pound for pound.
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The Georgian’s résumé explains why nobody expected him to sit this one out. His UFC run opened with losses to Frankie Saenz and Ricky Simón, and then he ripped off 14 straight wins, the fourth-longest streak in company history, beating former champions José Aldo, Henry Cejudo, Sean O’Malley and Yan himself along the way. His 119 successful takedowns are the most anyone has landed in the UFC. He grew up in Vani, a small Georgian village, learning traditional Georgian wrestling and sambo before moving to the United States at 21 to train under Ray Longo and Matt Serra. A man built on that kind of pace has never looked like someone who’d let a nose keep him out of a title fight.
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Yan, a Master of Sport in boxing, is the wrong opponent to bring a compromised nose to, if the reports are accurate. His hands have always been the cleanest weapon in this rivalry.
What’s next
UFC 333 takes place Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, with Alexander Volkanovski vs. Movsar Evloev in the main event. Dvalishvili and Yan go right before it, five rounds for the bantamweight belt, and the first clean jab Yan lands will tell us how much that skipped surgery matters.
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