Fifty-eight takedown attempts. That number from UFC 333 keeps rattling around my skull, because it set the UFC record for a single fight and Merab Dvalishvili still left the Etihad Arena on October 24 with his second straight loss to Petr Yan. He finished five of them. That’s an 8.6 percent completion rate, which is roughly the hit rate on my Saturday night props, and nobody’s putting me in the bantamweight GOAT conversation.
TJ Dillashaw is in that conversation, and so is Dvalishvili. So when Dillashaw went on the JAXXON PODCAST and picked apart the trilogy loss in Abu Dhabi, I listened. His diagnosis is the most useful thing anyone has said about Dvalishvili since he lost the 135-pound title at UFC 323 last December.
“The only thing is that Merab doesn’t have another way to beat Yan,” Dillashaw said. “The way he can slow him down from throwing punches is by shooting a shot. The way that he can score points is by getting a takedown.”
That’s the whole problem in two sentences. One tool does the defending, the scoring and the cardio warfare. Once Yan figured out how to survive that tool, there was nothing behind it.
Fifty-Three Misses Is a Lot of Free Information
Here’s how I read the box score. Every failed shot is a data point handed to the other guy. Dvalishvili gave Yan 53 of them. By the back half of the fight, Yan’s corner was openly reminding him that Dvalishvili couldn’t keep him down, and Yan responded the way any smart striker would. He got more comfortable letting his hands go, and he was considerably more accurate on the feet even though Dvalishvili kept his output high.
The frustrating part is that the early rounds looked fine. Dvalishvili’s pressure won him the first two rounds at UFC 333, the same way he started strong at UFC 323. Then the shots stopped landing and the fight belonged to Yan. Two fights, same script. In my line of work, when a pattern repeats with that kind of consistency, you stop calling it bad luck.
Dillashaw described the loop in the podcast clip that made the rounds on r/MMA. As he laid it out, Dvalishvili throws his hands, gets on a shot and hopes it lands, and if it doesn’t, he backs out and bounces around.
Throw, shoot, reset. If the shot fails, nothing bad happens to Yan. He sprawls, Dvalishvili bounces out, and they run it back. Yan can defend that sequence for 25 minutes without ever paying a toll.
The Fix Is Smaller Than It Sounds
Dillashaw’s point is that the toll booth is already built. Dvalishvili just never charges anyone.
Dillashaw wanted to know why Dvalishvili isn’t using his takedowns to set up his strikes, and why that hasn’t become part of his game.
He credited the wrestling first, and generously. “He gets you to believe in your hands and he shoots a shot. He’s the best in the world at getting on the legs,” he said. Then he flipped the sequence around. “He would be even more of a nightmare if he’s like faking a shot,” Dillashaw continued. “Get him to sprawl and then fire off. Bring the knee up the middle, bring in kicks, setting up your combos off your shots.”
Think about what a sprawl actually does to a guy. Hips go back, weight drops, head comes forward and down. Do that 58 times in a fight and you’ve trained yourself to react hard to the first twitch of a level change. That reflex is exactly what a knee up the middle feeds on. Dvalishvili spent an entire fight teaching Yan to flinch and then never punished the flinch once.
I’ll grant the obvious objection. Bolting a new layer onto an elite fighter’s game this late is hard, and plenty of guys have tried to become someone else in camp and looked worse for it. Dillashaw’s ask doesn’t require a striking overhaul, though. Dvalishvili doesn’t have to outbox Yan, which Dillashaw flatly said he won’t do. He only has to make the fake shot as scary as the real one, so that Yan can’t sit on the sprawl. If even a handful of those 53 misses had been fakes into a knee or a kick, the defensive math for Yan changes completely.
“If he was able to do that, he could have won this fight,” Dillashaw said.
I think he’s right, and the evidence is the 2022 fight. Dvalishvili beat Yan once with the pressure-and-shots formula. Yan adjusted, and he’s now won two straight. The guy who adjusts usually keeps winning until the other guy adjusts back.
Dvalishvili’s next job is rebounding against a fellow contender to stay near the title picture. I’ll be watching that fight for one thing. If I see a level change that turns into a knee to the chin, I’ll take a fourth Yan fight seriously. If I see 40 more single legs and a lot of bouncing, I’m passing on that one at any price.
