Merab Dvalishvili lost the bantamweight title trilogy to Petr Yan at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi, and a few days later he was on Instagram telling fans he wants to be back in the Octagon soon. Good. That’s the correct instinct for a fighter whose whole identity is volume and pressure. The harder question is who he fights when he gets there, and my answer is Payton Talbott.
First, the fight itself, because it explains everything that comes next.
What actually happened in the trilogy
Yahoo Sports, running an SI piece, laid out the shape of it. Dvalishvili came out at his usual pace and clearly took Rounds 1 and 2. Then Yan won Rounds 3, 4 and 5 and kept the belt, his first successful defense across two title reigns. His first reign ended with the controversial loss to Aljamain Sterling at UFC 259.
That round split matters. Dvalishvili has built a career on the idea that his output in the first 10 minutes becomes a tax his opponent can’t pay in the last 15. Against most of the division, that math works. Against Yan, across two straight fights, it hasn’t. Yan won the rematch at UFC 323 to take the belt, and nearly a year later he absorbed the early surge again and owned the back half. When a guy makes that adjustment twice, the problem is structural. It isn’t a bad night.
The head to head now reads 2-1 Yan. Dvalishvili won the first meeting by unanimous decision at a 2023 Fight Night in Las Vegas, the win that kept his streak rolling into a victory over Henry Cejudo. After that he took the title from Sean O’Malley at UFC 306, beat O’Malley again at UFC 316 and made three defenses in total before Yan reversed things. That’s a résumé most bantamweights would trade a kidney for. It also means a fourth Yan fight, right now, has nothing to sell. You can’t market a rivalry the other guy has won twice in a row.
Why the quick turnaround makes sense
The usual advice after a title loss is to rest, rebuild and come back in eight months with a plan. That advice was written for fighters who need recovery time from damage. Dvalishvili’s style punishes inactivity more than most, because pace is a skill you keep sharp by using it. The trilogy itself showed the risk of waiting. Fans sat through almost a year between the rematch and the third fight, and the extra rest looked like it was helping through two rounds before it stopped helping entirely.
So yes, get busy. Just pick the right assignment.
Talbott over the obvious names
The source lays out the field. Yan specifically called out Song Yadong after his defense, which tells you where the champion’s attention is. An O’Malley rematch with Yan is also on the table, since O’Malley beat Yan by contentious split decision at UFC 280. Both of those are fights for Yan, and the UFC will want them for Yan.
That leaves Dvalishvili with a pool of contenders who aren’t currently in the champion’s crosshairs, and Talbott is the most interesting one. He’s coming off a quick win over Deiveson Figueiredo, which puts him squarely in the contender conversation, and Dvalishvili has never fought him. A fresh name is the point. Dvalishvili has already run through much of the division’s upper tier during his title run, so a third O’Malley fight would be a step backward, and if he takes Song he collides with the fight Yan just requested.
Stylistically, Talbott is the right test for what went wrong in Abu Dhabi. Dvalishvili’s issue against Yan was what happened after the opening 10 minutes. A dangerous opponent who has to survive the early pressure, and who will make Dvalishvili pay for any drop in sharpness late, forces the former champion to show whether he’s made a real adjustment to how he spends his gas tank. If he comes out against Talbott and still looks like the guy who owned Rounds 1 and 2 against Yan, but sustains it, that’s the fight that earns him a fourth meeting down the line.
There’s a matchmaking logic too. The UFC gets a former champ defending his spot against a rising contender, which is the cleanest way to sort a crowded top five without anyone sitting on the sidelines waiting for a title picture to clear. Song or O’Malley gets Yan. The Dvalishvili versus Talbott winner is next in line. Everyone stays active.
The alternative is Dvalishvili waiting around for the belt holder to finish his own list, and we just watched what a long layoff did for him. Book Talbott for the first quarter of 2027 and let Dvalishvili prove the trilogy loss was about the final three rounds and nothing deeper.
