The UFC put out the full episode of “UFC 333 Countdown” on Monday, and MMA Fighting pushed it out on X a couple of minutes later. The episode builds toward Saturday, Oct. 24. Alexander Volkanovski defends the featherweight title against unbeaten Movsar Evloev in the main event, and Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili meet for a third time in the bantamweight co-main.
Evloev’s resume is about as clean as they come. He’s 10-0 inside the Octagon, and one of the UFC’s own Korean-language promo shorts billed him as a 20-0 fighter. The UFC wins include Lerone Murphy, Aljamain Sterling, Arnold Allen and Diego Lopes, a list that would get most featherweights a title shot two times over. What’s missing is a UFC finish. Evloev has never had one, and he told MMA Fighting he isn’t losing sleep over it.
“My whole republic, my whole country, are waiting for me to bring that title. So for me, all of this is more important than just my ego,” Evloev said.
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Volkanovski is 38, which puts him a lot closer to the exit than the entrance. His camp has apparently been brutal. Volkanovski posted a clip of a training challenge in which one of his teammates passed out from exhaustion, and his reaction was about what you’d expect from a guy who treats suffering as a hobby: “Did he pass out? F*ck man, that was an absolute war.” UFC Brasil also posted footage of Volkanovski laying out how he sees the fight going against Evloev.
The co-main has the better plot. Dvalishvili beat Yan over three rounds in 2023, and that loss was Yan’s third in a row. A lot of people wrote him off as a contender after that. Then Yan beat Dvalishvili this past December over five rounds and ended his reign at bantamweight. That makes it 1-1 between them, and both wins were decisive. The third fight decides who owns the series, and the belt goes with it.
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Evloev already has the next featherweight fight mapped out. He told MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn that Aljamain Sterling vs. Kevin Vallejos should be treated as a title eliminator, and he’d put the winner ahead of Jean Silva for a shot after UFC 333. That’s bold talk from a guy who still has to get past Volkanovski first.
For viewers in Brazil, the card streams on Paramount+ with the prelims starting at 10 a.m. Brasília time and the main card fights at 11 a.m. Daniel Santos, Iasmin Lucindo and Nicolle Caliari carry the Brazilian flag on the lineup.
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My quick take: forget the speeches about legacy and look at the record. Ten UFC wins, zero finishes. That’s a fighter who banks rounds, and a five-round title fight is 25 minutes of rounds to bank against a 38-year-old. Volkanovski has the bigger name and the bigger moments, but age and pace are the numbers I’d want on my side, and Evloev has both. In the co-main, I trust the December version of Yan more than the 2023 version of anybody. Saturday will tell us whether that five-round win showed who Yan really is or whether he just caught Dvalishvili on a bad night.
