Petr Yan retained the bantamweight championship with a unanimous decision victory over Merab Dvalishvili in the UFC 333 co-main event in Abu Dhabi. All three judges scored it 48-47 in the trilogy bout. Yan had won the belt from Dvalishvili at UFC 323 in December.
Petr Yan has retained the UFC bantamweight championship, beating Merab Dvalishvili by unanimous decision in the co-main event of UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi on October 24. All three judges scored the trilogy bout 48-47, as the UFC reported.
The result gives Yan back-to-back wins over Dvalishvili. He took the belt from the Georgian at UFC 323 in December, also by unanimous decision over five rounds, and has now successfully defended it in the rematch.
Yan, 33, moves to 20-5 and remains champion. The Russian, who trains with the Archangel Michael Club, brings a switch stance and the sharper striking numbers into the trilogy: 5.12 significant strikes landed per minute at 54 percent accuracy. Before taking the title, he had won three straight by decision, including victories over Deiveson Figueiredo in November 2024 and Marcus McGhee in July 2025.
Dvalishvili, 35, drops to 21-5. He entered the fight as the number one bantamweight contender and the number two pound-for-pound fighter on the AgentMMA rankings. His game is built on relentless wrestling, averaging 6.4 takedown attempts per 15 minutes against Yan's 1.58. Before losing the belt in December, he had beaten Cory Sandhagen by decision at UFC 320 in October 2025 and submitted Sean O'Malley at UFC 316 in June 2025.
Why it matters
- The trilogy now stands at 2-1 in Yan's favor. Dvalishvili won the first meeting by unanimous decision in March 2023, and Yan has taken the last two.
- All three fights went the full distance and ended on the scorecards, with the latest decided by a single point on every card.
- Dvalishvili now has back-to-back losses to the same man after a run that included three straight title-fight wins.
The matchup was a clear contrast in styles. Yan has landed nearly 0.8 more significant strikes per minute than Dvalishvili's 4.33, with 12 points more in accuracy (54 percent to 42). Dvalishvili's edge is in volume of takedown attempts, more than four times Yan's rate. The two-inch height gap is small, but Yan holds a two-inch reach advantage on paper: 170 cm to Dvalishvili's 173 cm is actually a three-centimeter edge for the challenger, a reminder that Yan's switch-stance striking, not reach, has been the difference.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
