Late in the fifth round at the Etihad Arena, somewhere past his 52nd takedown attempt by MMA Fighting’s count, Merab Dvalishvili had stopped exploding into his shots. They drifted now. He kept throwing them anyway, and Petr Yan kept answering with left hands and kicks to the body, aimed at the same place he’d hurt him in the third round. With ten seconds left, Dvalishvili put his head down and charged for one last exchange. Yan met him with one more shot to the body. Then the horn, three scorecards reading 48-47 for the champion, and two spent men hopping out of the octagon to shake hands with Dana White and Hunter Campbell.
That was the fight. If your version of this rivalry was a Russian and a Georgian glaring at each other over flags, you watched the wrong thing.
I get why the shorthand is tempting. The coverage itself leans on it, and fight night copy across the sites was full of “the Georgian” this and “the Russian” that, because it’s quick and it fits a caption. Nationality labels are easy. What happened in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 24 took a lot more than a caption to explain.
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Two answers to the same question
This trilogy has a real arc, and it’s built on adjustments. In March 2023 in Las Vegas, Dvalishvili shut Yan out on all three scorecards, winning every round. Last December at UFC 323, Yan took the bantamweight title from him by unanimous decision. MMA Fighting listed them at 21-5 and 21-6 on fight night. Two men that even on paper don’t need a manufactured feud to sell a third fight.
Watch what Dvalishvili did for the first 10 minutes. Single legs, body locks, a spinning back kick in the second round, takedown after takedown, with Yan scrambling up each time. The pro-Yan crowd booed the wrestling and he didn’t care at all. MMA Fighting had him up 20-18 after two, and Bloody Elbow called him clearly ahead. That kind of pace is a craft. You don’t wake up able to chain dozens of shots over 25 minutes against a champion. Somebody, in some room nobody films, spent years running those drills with him until the volume became a style.
Then watch what Yan did with it. One r/MMA user made the sharpest point I read all night, arguing that the commentary early on kept describing Yan as slow and out of it when he was actually defending, reading, and waiting for Dvalishvili to spend himself. I’d go further. The patience in Rounds 1 and 2 was the whole plan. By the third, Yan had stuffed three takedowns in a row according to MMA Fighting’s live blog, and then the liver kick landed and Dvalishvili had to circle away. Bloody Elbow had Round 4 as the first clear frame for Yan, who stuffed the shots, landed big punches and left his rival looking a little gassed. In the fifth he was throwing jumping knees and left hooks to the body while Dvalishvili, out of gas and still marching forward, kept coming.
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The UFC’s broadcast account posted a slow motion replay of the liver shot. That replay is the most honest piece of rivalry content this fight produced, because it shows exactly what the trilogy was about: one man’s engine against another man’s accumulated damage, decided by inches of placement.
The best counterargument
The strongest case for the flag-waving version is that it sells. Casual fans need a hook, and a trilogy between a Russian and a Georgian writes its own promo. Fine. But this fight didn’t need the hook, and it buried it by the third round. Ariel Helwani’s reaction on X said nothing about countries or bad blood. “Fight of the year contender. No doubt,” he wrote, and then listed what actually moved him: “The pace. The skill. The determination.” He added that he had “No idea how they possessed the motor to keep going like that for 25 mins ... and then jump over the cage.” That’s the sound of a sport selling itself on craft. Even THE MMA GURU, who doesn’t do subtle, broke it down by rounds and body shots.
And look at how these men carried themselves. Yan walked out with his two sons, with his young son in his corner for a title defense, according to MMA Fighting. Dvalishvili, beaten and empty, still found the legs to clear the fence alongside the man who beat him. That isn’t a geopolitical grudge match. That’s two professionals who’ve spent three fights and close to four years solving each other.
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Credit the rooms
What bothers me most about the meme version is who it erases. A 48-47 decision on all three cards, after Dvalishvili banked the first two rounds, comes down to preparation. Yan’s composure under that volume and his willingness to give away early rounds to win late ones were rehearsed somewhere. So was Dvalishvili’s refusal to stop shooting when the crowd booed and the shots stopped working. Those rooms don’t get named on broadcasts. They should.
Call it Russia against Georgia if you need to. The judges called it 48-47 three times, and the replay everyone wanted to see again was a kick to the liver.
