UFC bantamweight champion Petr Yan, who faces Merab Dvalishvili in the co-main event of UFC 333, likes the idea of avenging a loss to Sean O’Malley for his next title defense in 2027.
Yan lost a split decision to O’Malley in 2022, almost four years to the date of the Dvalishvili trilogy, and believes “Suga” could be next in line after scoring a massive second-round knockout over Aiemann Zahabi on the UFC White House card this past June.
“Why not?” Yan told MMA Fighting through an interpreter. “For real, we have history, so why wouldn’t that be the fight?”
O’Malley won a decision over Song Yadong prior to the Zahabi knockout, improving to 2-0 since his back-to-back title losses to Merab Dvalishvili. The popular bantamweight was 18-1 in the sport prior to that stretch, a run that included bonus-winning victories over Yan and Aljamain Sterling.
Yan, however, said he’s “not necessarily impressed” by O’Malley’s recent performances in the cage.
“It’s just that he’s obviously winning,” Yan said. “He’s doing a great job. He’s moving forward, and he’s definitely proved that he is the next one, or one of the next ones who should be good to fight for the title, but it’s not that I’m watching it, and I’m impressed by it, just he’s on the right trajectory.”
In the end, the Russian champion said it’s ultimately to the UFC to decide who’s the rightful contender for the belt.
“I don’t know about who’s deserving of the belt,” Yan said. “There’s a lot of guys in the top five that I already fought anyways. Whoever the UFC puts in front of me, that is who I’m going to fight. Whoever they think is the next opponent, I don’t choose my opponent. I’ll fight whoever they put in front of me.”
Yan regained the UFC title in December of 2025 with a upset victory over Dvalishvili, scoring a decision at UFC 323 to extend his winning streak to four and avenge a 2023 loss to the Georgian talent. Dvalishvili told MMA Fighting recently he wasn’t himself in the rematch, and has changed that for UFC 333. Yan expects him to try and wrestle non-stop for 25 minutes.
“I’m sure he’s gonna try and go for a double leg or go for a takedown and try and and put his pressure on me or whatever, but we’re ready for everything,” Yan said. “We’re ready for whatever he’s gonna bring. We’re ready to wrestle if we need to wrestle, and we’re ready for the tempo. We’ll get into the cage on Saturday and then we’ll see what happens. 100 percent he’s gonna come to wrestle this time around and we’ll just see what happens in the fight.”
The two bantamweight greats have now shared the octagon for 10 full rounds in the past three and a half years, and Yan vows to do everything in his power to finish him in Abu Dhabi.
“I see it and I can envision it,” Yan said of stopping Dvalishvili. “And I’m gonna do whatever I can to finish the fight earlier this time around. I will put all of my effort into making sure that that happens.”
Yan said he’s not concerned about possibly being considered the greatest bantamweight of all-time with a victory over Dvalishvili because “the most important thing right now is to get the victory and all of these GOAT talks, that’s gonna happen afterwards.”
In fact, he also clarified comments made recently about a possible move to the featherweight division in the near future.
“This is not something that I’m thinking about,” Yan said. “It’s just that the way the question was asked of me then is that would you go down a weight or would you rather go up a weight, and I chose that I would rather go up a weight. That was the context of the question. It’s not something that I’m looking at at all. At the moment, I still have so much work to do in this division, defend this belt, win this fight and then there’s other contenders.”