UFC 333 has two title fights on top, and the prefight talk this week split right down the middle. The Deep Waters show on 247Sports previewed both of them, Alexander Volkanovski against Movsar Evloev and Petr Yan against Merab Dvalishvili. Yahoo Sports ran a piece in which a UFC analyst pointed to a big concern for Dvalishvili heading into his trilogy with Yan.
The UFC is framing that co-main around the champion. The promotion’s X account posted a throwback to the night Yan became undisputed champion for the first time and billed UFC 333 as Yan defending his belt against Dvalishvili. That makes Merab the challenger in the third chapter of this rivalry, and it means whatever worried that analyst now gets tested with the bantamweight title on the line.
Volkanovski, meanwhile, gave a frank answer about age. In comments shared by Dovy on X, he said he has eased off his training a little:
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“I’m still doing them same fight simulators and very, very hard sessions. The intensity’s there, but we have to pull back a little bit. I can’t do what I was doing 5, 6 years ago. I probably could, but, um, it’s, you know, it’s going to be more detrimental.”
He added that the shark tanks and fight simulators are the part he refuses to compromise, and that as long as the output and intensity are there, he’s satisfied. He also seemed to be enjoying fight week on his own feed. Sportsbet posted that “Alexander Volkanovski is a Movie Star,” and Volkanovski quoted it with three laughing emojis.
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Evloev’s camp news was about the scale. Speaking to UFC on Paramount, in a clip Dovy shared, he said he skips the sauna entirely for a 26-pound cut:
“I even don’t use the sauna to cut weight. So I just do diet a little longer before weigh in and I’m a good Like you said, I’m disciplined. So easy to cut weight and I don’t think about tiramisu too much.”
The lightest note of the week belonged to Yan’s family. Dovy posted a photo of Yan’s brother and said he looks like the middleweight version of the champion, which is a funny image and nothing more.
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My take: Evloev’s answer is the one I’d circle. I have watched too many fighters win the weigh-in and lose the fight because they spent Friday boiling in a sauna, so a guy who diets his way down 26 pounds and jokes about tiramisu is telling you he plans to show up with a full gas tank. Volkanovski deserves credit for saying the quiet part out loud. Every veteran pulls back eventually, and his logic (protect the body, keep the hard sparring sharp) is sound coaching. Still, when one man is trimming his camp and the other says the cut was easy, I lean Evloev. As for Yan and Dvalishvili, trilogies go to the fighter whose corner changes something real between fights, and I want to see which of them walks out with a new answer to an old problem in Round 1.
