Merab Dvalishvili Will Fight Petr Yan at Less Than 100 Percent, His Coach Reveals

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2026 · ABU DHABI

The trilogy was already the hardest kind of fight to call. Then, three days before UFC 333, the challenger’s own camp said out loud what camps almost never say out loud: Merab Dvalishvili is not coming into Saturday night whole. Per BJPenn’s reporting on Wednesday, October 21, Dvalishvili’s longtime coach revealed that the former champion will fight at less than 100 percent, fighting through a major “problem” he is carrying into Etihad Arena. The report does not name the specific injury or issue, and Previously is not going to invent one. What is established is narrower, and still significant: the camp itself has acknowledged that its fighter is compromised, on the record, in fight week, before a bantamweight title fight against the one man who has already beaten him in this run.

That man is Petr Yan, the champion, and he is favored to do it again. BJPenn lists Yan at -158 for Saturday, with Dvalishvili at +124 — close odds for a title fight, and honest ones. This is not a coronation card. It is a trilogy, in Abu Dhabi, on a night the UFC has built into one of its biggest international weeks of the year, and almost everyone who has weighed in publicly expects it to be tighter than the last meeting. For the full fight hub, see Previously’s fight sports coverage and the sports front.

UFC 333 and Abu Dhabi Showdown Week

UFC 333 takes place this Saturday, October 24, 2026, at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. The event closes Abu Dhabi Showdown Week, which runs October 19-25, and it is the UFC’s 24th event in Abu Dhabi — a measure of how central the city has become to the promotion’s calendar. The week is not just the pay-per-view. UAE Warriors runs on Thursday, October 22, and Power Slap 25 follows on Friday, October 23, before the UFC takes the arena on Saturday. That layering is deliberate: Abu Dhabi fight week is now a festival, with regional talent, the UFC’s sister properties, and a major numbered card stacked into seven days.

The card carries two title fights. Alexander Volkanovski headlines the card’s title picture per event coverage, and the co-main event is the bantamweight trilogy between Yan and Dvalishvili. Two championships on one night raises the stakes for everybody underneath them, and it gives Saturday a shape few cards manage: a proven all-time great at the top of the bill, and directly beneath him, a rivalry fight that will define the next era of one of the sport’s deepest divisions.

How Yan and Merab got to a third fight

Trilogies only happen when the first two fights leave something unresolved, and this one does, even though the most recent chapter was clear. At UFC 323 last December, Yan beat Dvalishvili by unanimous decision to take the championship. There was no controversy in the scoring and no asterisk offered at the time. Yan won, and he won on the judges’ cards across the board.

What makes a third fight necessary anyway is who Dvalishvili was before that night. Before the UFC 323 loss, Dvalishvili had been widely viewed as arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport — a champion whose pressure, wrestling volume and relentless pace had made elite opponents look ordinary. A fighter with that standing does not disappear from the title picture because of one decision loss. He gets the chance to win his belt back, especially when the rivalry stands where this one does. Saturday is that chance, and both men know it may be the last one the matchup gives them while both are still at championship level.

What the experts expect: closer this time

The professional read on this fight is unusually consistent. Pro fighters polled by BJPenn lean toward Yan to retain, but they expect a close fight — not a repeat runaway. Former champion Michael Bisping, whose pick was reported by Yardbarker, also selected Yan, and his reasoning lays out the tactical shape most analysts see. Bisping’s case, as reported, is that Yan’s boxing is clean — the sharpest single weapon in the fight — while Dvalishvili will land more takedowns across five rounds. Put those two things together and you get Bisping’s conclusion: this will be closer than the last one.

That is a plausible script, and it is worth spelling out why. In a five-round title fight, Dvalishvili does not need to dominate the wrestling exchanges; he needs to win enough of them, often enough, to bank rounds, drain Yan’s legs, and turn clean boxing exchanges into scrambles. Yan, for his part, does not need to stop every takedown. He needs to make Dvalishvili pay for the entries, keep the fight standing long enough for his combinations to accumulate, and avoid the long stretches on the mat or against the fence where Dvalishvili’s pace becomes a scorecard problem. If both men execute their best skill, the rounds split — which is exactly why the odds are -158 and +124 rather than something wider, and why so many fighters polled landed on Yan by a margin they described as close.

The coach’s revelation changes the questions, not the facts we have

Into that balanced picture landed Wednesday’s news. Per BJPenn, Dvalishvili’s longtime coach revealed that his fighter will compete at less than 100 percent, fighting through a major problem. Again, the specifics matter here: the reporting available on Wednesday does not name a particular injury, and any story that filled in a body part, a diagnosis, or a timeline would be inventing it. Previously will not do that. What the camp has acknowledged, through the coach, is that Dvalishvili is compromised heading into Saturday.

Why would a camp say that before a title fight? Sometimes it is honesty that leaks out in a long fight-week interview cycle. Sometimes it is expectation management. Sometimes it is a message to the fighter himself. What it is not, on its own, is proof of how Saturday will go. Fighters have won title fights hurt before, and Dvalishvili’s entire style — pace, pressure, refusal to go away — is built for nights when the clean, perfect version of a game plan is unavailable. If anything, a compromised Dvalishvili might lean even harder on wrestling volume, which is precisely the path Bisping and others already forecast for him. The revelation raises the stakes of every exchange: if Yan’s clean boxing finds a challenger who cannot move, pivot or shoot the way he normally does, a close fight can tilt quickly. If Dvalishvili’s engine is intact where it counts, the coach’s words will read on Sunday as fight-week noise.

There is also a responsibility point for readers. A vague, serious-sounding health revelation in fight week invites speculation, and speculation about a named athlete’s body, without a named source for the specific claim, is how misinformation starts. The verified position on Wednesday night is this: Dvalishvili is fighting, the fight is on, his camp says he is below full fitness and fighting through a major problem, and neither the specific problem nor any change to the bout’s status has been reported. If that changes before Saturday, it will be news on its own.

The rest of a deep main card

UFC 333 is not a two-fight card. At heavyweight, Alexander Volkov, ranked No. 2, meets Rizvan Kuniev, ranked No. 7 — the kind of ranking fight that quietly decides who is next when the title picture at heavyweight moves. Volkov’s length and experience against a lower-ranked but dangerous opponent is a familiar UFC test: win, and the No. 2 spot stays a title argument; lose, and the division reshuffles overnight.

At featherweight, Aaron Pico, ranked No. 11, faces Losene Keita. Pico’s UFC run has already contained extremes: he was knocked out by Lerone Murphy during his UFC debut run, then rebuilt with a win over Patricio Pitbull. Per BJPenn, Pico says he is relaxed heading into Saturday — a small detail, but a telling one for a fighter whose talent has never been the question and whose composure under the brightest lights has been. Keita is exactly the kind of opponent who tests whether that calm is real.

At flyweight, Lone’er Kavanagh meets Ramazan Temirov, a matchup previewed by MMA Mania. Kavanagh arrives off a war with Brandon Royval three months ago — the sort of fight that can either sharpen a young flyweight or leave a mark on him. MMA Mania’s preview predicts Temirov by knockout; that is their prediction, attributed as such, not a result and not Previously’s pick. It does, however, frame the danger in the matchup: Temirov carries fight-ending power, and a Kavanagh still carrying the miles from the Royval war is a target worth watching from the first exchange.

What Saturday decides

By Sunday morning in Abu Dhabi, the bantamweight division will have an answer. Either Yan has beaten Dvalishvili twice in a row, closed the trilogy as champion, and established that December was not a good night but a hierarchy — or Dvalishvili, compromised or not, has reclaimed a championship and restored the pound-for-pound argument that made him the division’s standard in the first place. The experts lean Yan. The odds lean Yan, gently. The challenger’s own camp has handed everyone a reason to wonder how much of the real Dvalishvili is walking into Etihad Arena. That uncertainty, honestly reported, is not a weakness in Saturday’s co-main event. It is the fight.