Petr Yan defends the bantamweight title against Merab Dvalishvili in the co-main event of UFC 333 on October 24, and this fight exists only because the first two settled nothing. Dvalishvili won the original meeting by unanimous decision in 2023; Yan won the rematch by unanimous decision at UFC 323 in December 2025 to reclaim the belt. A third meeting between the same two fighters for the same title is rare, and whoever wins this one closes a rivalry that has otherwise gone exactly one fight each.
A rivalry that has refused to repeat itself
The first fight, in March 2023, went the full five rounds and was lopsided on the scorecards in Dvalishvili's favor — all three judges had it the same way. The second, at UFC 323 this past December, also went the distance and also produced a clean sweep on the cards, this time for Yan. Two fights, two unanimous decisions, two different winners. Neither man has finished the other; both results came down to five full rounds of judging.
That pattern is part of why this third fight carries more weight than a typical rubber match. It isn't settling a close, debatable series — it's settling two fights that each looked decisive in the moment, in opposite directions. A trilogy where both previous results were unanimous is unusual enough that whichever man wins Saturday has a real claim to having actually solved the other, rather than just having gotten the better of a coin-flip style matchup. The matchup itself — how Yan's striking stacks up against Dvalishvili's pace and volume — is broken down on the Yan vs. Dvalishvili fight page; this is about what the result changes once it's final.
What a Yan win means
A Yan win would make him a two-time champion who has now beaten his most dangerous rival twice in a row, after having lost to him once. That's a specific kind of résumé: not just winning the belt back, but doing it with a second consecutive win over the exact man who beat him for it in the first place. It would also mark the first time in this rivalry that either man has beaten the other more than once, breaking the string of alternating results that has defined the series so far.
For the division, a second straight Yan win over Dvalishvili would make it much harder to argue for a fourth fight. Per the current UFC rankings, Dvalishvili sits at No. 1 behind Yan, but a fighter who has now lost two of three to the champion has a much thinner case for an immediate fourth shot than he did walking into this one. That would open the door for the next-ranked contenders — Sean O'Malley and Song Yadong sit directly behind Dvalishvili — to argue for a title shot of their own instead of another rematch.
What a Dvalishvili win means
A Dvalishvili win would do the opposite: even the trilogy at a win apiece each way is impossible once a rubber match is fought, but a Dvalishvili win would make him the only man in the series to have beaten Yan on paths Yan himself hasn't solved twice. It would also return the belt to a fighter who already has a run as a two-time champion in his own right, and it would hand Yan a second career loss to the same opponent in a rivalry where Yan had just evened the score.
A Dvalishvili win reopens the exact question his UFC 323 loss had seemingly closed — whether his pace and volume are a style Yan has a lasting answer for, or a problem that resurfaces whenever the two meet again. Winning the rubber match would settle that question in Dvalishvili's favor for good, at least until a fourth fight is ever discussed, and would put him back at the top of a division he has already led once before.
Why this is the fight week's second-biggest story
UFC 333 is built around two title fights, and the Volkanovski-Evloev main event carries the bigger stakes for a division that's never had this fight before. This one carries a different kind of weight: it's the first time in the bantamweight division's recent history that the same two fighters have fought three times for the same belt, and it ends a rivalry rather than opening one. That makes it a genuinely different kind of stakes question than most co-main events, where the bigger story is usually still ahead of the fighters rather than behind them.
The betting market reflects a rivalry that has already swung once in each direction without erasing either man's case. As of the most recent line, Yan is favored, with Dvalishvili the live underdog — a gap wide enough to reflect Yan's status as the man who won the more recent fight, but not so wide that the market has forgotten Dvalishvili's own win in the first meeting.
The takeaway
This is one of the few UFC title fights where neither outcome would be a surprise, because both men have already beaten the other once under full five-round scrutiny. A Yan win makes him the first fighter in this rivalry to beat Dvalishvili twice and pushes the division toward fresh contenders; a Dvalishvili win reclaims the belt and reopens exactly the stylistic question his last loss seemed to answer. Either way, Saturday's result — not the two that came before it — becomes the one that actually decides who has the other's number.