Petr Yan isn’t easing into fight week. The bantamweight champion said Merab Dvalishvili “knows that I humbled him” when they fought last year, adding that “He was broken,” according to Yahoo Sports. It’s a pointed thing to say about a man known for outlasting everyone, and Yan said it four days before the two meet for the third time.
The trilogy is the co-main event of UFC 333 this Saturday in Abu Dhabi, beneath Alexander Volkanovski’s featherweight title defense against the unbeaten Movsar Evloev. Yan’s belt is on the line. ESPN counts this as only the 19th trilogy in UFC history, which tells you how rarely the promotion lets a rivalry run this long.
The series is 1-1, and both wins were decisive. Dvalishvili took the first meeting in 2023 over three rounds. That loss was Yan’s third straight, following a split-decision loss to Aljamain Sterling in their rematch and a split-decision loss to Sean O’Malley. At the time it looked like it had pushed him out of the title picture for good. Then came this past December. Yan took Dvalishvili’s bantamweight championship over five rounds, and MMA Fighting’s “UFC 333 Countdown” called it a virtuoso performance. That win is what Yan is pointing to now.
Dvalishvili’s 2026 has been rough outside the Octagon, too. At RAF 12 in August, Henry Cejudo pinned him in 36 seconds to win the promotion’s lightweight crossover title. RAF’s first crossover rankings, released Monday, list Dvalishvili at No. 5. That was a wrestling match under a different ruleset, so read as much into it as you like, which shouldn’t be much.
The stakes go beyond the belt. In an MMA Fighting roundtable, Alexander K. Lee argued that whoever wins the series has the strongest claim to the best bantamweight ever. Jed Meshew disagreed, pointing to Dominick Cruz and his seven title wins. Meshew noted a Dvalishvili win would bring him to five title wins, close enough to start the argument, while a Yan win would put him at three.
My take: Yan talking like this is a tell, and I mean that as a compliment. Fighters who believe they solved a puzzle usually say so, and “broken” is a specific word. It describes a man who stopped pushing late and stopped believing his pace would wear the other guy down. If Yan saw that in December, he has a five-round blueprint. The question for Dvalishvili is whether he and his camp found an answer since then, because the version of him that lost in December can’t simply turn up with more cardio and expect a different result. I like the fighter who’s already done it at championship length. Yan by decision, and I’m praying the judges keep the 10-8s in their pockets.
