Forty-nine takedown attempts. That was Merab Dvalishvili's statement when he first met Petr Yan in Las Vegas in March 2023, as the Georgian known as "The Machine" ground his rival down with relentless wrestling and suffocating cardio. He went on to impose genuine dominance in the Octagon, defending the bantamweight title three times in 2025 alone, against Umar Nurmagomedov, Sean O'Malley and Cory Sandhagen. Dvalishvili later admitted he had carried a serious knee injury into his UFC 323 rematch with Yan in December 2025, where he lost the belt, on top of a gruelling weight cut and total exhaustion. "Everything went bad. I had the worst game plan, worst camp, worst training of any championship fight. But it's no excuse. I have no excuses. Yan beat me. I thought I could win and I took the fight, no regrets," he conceded. For the trilogy, he has scrapped one of his trademark habits, the full-speed sparring he used to do on the morning of title fights. "I'm not going to spar this time... I felt good doing it, but I think there is a smarter way," he explained. His head coach, John Wood, stopped doubting him long ago, when an injury-ravaged Dvalishvili still found a way to win. "In my mind, I was like, 'Oh s---, this guy really can do anything. He really is just a machine,'" Wood recalled. "I am better than him and I have to prove it," Dvalishvili insisted.
For Petr Yan, that first defeat was the start of a long road back. The Russian rebuilt with three straight wins over Song Yadong, Deiveson Figueiredo and Marcus McGhee, and when the pair met again at UFC 323, he produced a technical masterpiece. Yan limited Dvalishvili to two takedowns from 29 attempts, broke the champion's resistance and took four of the five rounds on two of the three judges' scorecards. He now heads into the trilogy as the reigning champion and the favourite with FanDuel Sportsbook's bookmakers. In his camp, coach Kairat Nurmagambetov has built a digital decision tree mapping out a response to almost every scenario Dvalishvili might force. "This fight will be decided by fight IQ, mental strength and which fighter makes better decisions," Yan declared. "The second fight, I beat him. In the third, I will do the same."
Between them, the two have produced the most dramatic 1-1 series the UFC's bantamweight division has ever seen, and the third instalment, scheduled for UFC 333 at Abu Dhabi's Etihad Arena, shapes up as the defining test of both men's careers. Tyson Chartier, head coach of the New England Cartel gym, distilled the contest in his breakdown of the trilogy for the UFC. "At the end of the day, fighting is not easy, but it's simple," he observed. Crucially, Dvalishvili's longtime coach Ray Longo will be absent from his corner this time, a change that could reshape how Wood and former champion Aljamain Sterling, Dvalishvili's close friend and training partner, communicate between rounds. Ultimately, defeat in Abu Dhabi will end the loser's bid to be recognised as the greatest bantamweight of all time once and for all.
