Petr Yan won the fight. Now he says the conversation that followed it might not stay private.
“The fight ended. The conversation continued. 👀 Petr Yan says a political exchange with Merab Dvalishvili could soon surface,” Sherdog wrote on X late Sunday, linking to its story on the bantamweight champion’s comments. Yahoo Sports carried the same news under the same framing: a private political talk between the two may come out.
That is the whole of what’s public right now. The sources don’t say what was discussed or who said what. They also don’t say where it happened or how it would be released. Yan has hinted that something exists. Nobody has produced it. An eyeball emoji is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
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The timing is what makes it interesting. Yan beat Dvalishvili by unanimous decision at UFC 333 on Saturday, with all three judges turning in 48-47 cards, to keep the UFC bantamweight title. That was about as close as a clean sweep on the scorecards gets, and not everyone bought it. Ilia Topuria, a training partner of Dvalishvili’s, was caught on video reacting to the scores. “48-47 Yan? Nooo. What are you saying?” he said, per Championship Rounds.
Yan (21-5) is a two-time UFC bantamweight champion, a former interim champ and No. 4 in the UFC’s pound-for-pound rankings as of September. He sits at No. 1 in the Knockout Daily bantamweight rankings. Dvalishvili (21-6), the Georgian who trains with the Serra-Longo Fight Team, is No. 2. He is a former champion and the first Georgian-born titleholder in UFC history, and he owns the UFC record for successful takedowns with 124. He also beat Yan earlier in his 14-fight win streak, which is the fourth longest in UFC history.
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So this is a rivalry with a split history, a razor-thin result on Saturday and now, apparently, a political side that neither man had put on the record before.
Yan spent part of his post-fight night posing for photos with Alexander Volkanovski, who also won at UFC 333. Dvalishvili hasn’t been quoted in any of the reporting on Yan’s claim, and nothing in the sources shows him responding.
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If the exchange does come out, it lands in the middle of a title picture where the top two bantamweights have now split their two fights. Until something actually gets posted, this is Yan’s word about a conversation only two people heard. My advice is to wait for the clip and ignore the emojis.
