Merab Dvalishvili Says He Thrives as the Underdog Against Yan
Merab Dvalishvili says doubt is still useful to him as he prepares to chase the bantamweight title again. Speaking with Robert Whittaker during UFC Fight Week coverage, the former champion said he wants the pressure that comes with people picking against him.
The conversation sat inside a UFC 332 broadcast window, with Salt Lake City’s vacant flyweight title fight only days away. The real destination for Dvalishvili is UFC 333 on October 24 in Abu Dhabi, where he meets champion Petr Yan in the co-main event.
Whittaker asked whether emotion still gives Dvalishvili strength after their first pairing, a fight the Georgian has long described as personal. Dvalishvili did not talk around the question. He pointed to the same place he has always found fuel.
“Yeah, I think I like to be underdog,” Dvalishvili said. “I like when people doubt me and I prove them wrong.”
He said that feeling is not new. He said he has carried it through the stretch of his career when almost nobody treated him like a title fighter.
“I like this pressure, you know,” Dvalishvili said. “I was pretty much always like that.”
That version of his story is easy to forget now. Dvalishvili went from a fighter people dismissed to a champion who stacked defenses and broke records at 135 pounds. Then the second fight with Petr Yan reset the division.
He beat Petr Yan by decision in their first meeting in 2023. The rematch at UFC 323 on December 6, 2025, went the other way by unanimous decision and ended Dvalishvili’s title run. Yan left Las Vegas a two-time champion. Dvalishvili left with a 21-5 record and a loss he still describes in blunt terms.
“Nobody was believing me and then they finally started believing me,” Dvalishvili said. “I finally break some records.”
The belief, he said, became a problem against Petr Yan. Once people expected him to run through a man he had already beaten, the second fight stopped looking like the first one.
“Especially against Petr Yan, I already beat him and everybody was thinking that I can run through him,” Merab said. “And then I lost, and I lost very badly, you know, he break my face.”
That line is the center of the clip. Dvalishvili is not selling the rematch as a close night that got away. He is saying Petr Yan hurt him, that the loss was ugly, and that he still needs the edge that comes from walking in as the man with something to prove.
“So I need a little bit pressure for sure,” Dvalishvili said. “Jan is dangerous opponent.”
Yan is 20-5 and enters Abu Dhabi as the champion. Dvalishvili is the former titleholder trying to even a series that now sits 1-1. The rubber match headlines the undercard behind Alexander Volkanovski versus Movsar Evloev for the featherweight belt.
Dvalishvili also admitted the second fight was not only about Petr Yan’s power. He said he knew the danger going in and still failed to fight the way he planned.
“I always knew that, even my second fight,” Dvalishvili said. “But I still don’t do what I was supposed to do.”
That is the same theme he has used elsewhere in this camp. He has said he spent too much of the rematch in Petr Yan’s boxing range instead of forcing his own pace. This interview put that idea next to the underdog talk rather than next to a tactical whiteboard.
He thinks the third fight can hold both pieces at once.
“But now, this time, I think I will be able to put together like a smart fight, hard fight,” Merab Dvalishvili said. “And then like everything together.”
That is the bet he is making three weeks out. Smart enough not to stand in front of Petr Yan and trade the way he did in December. Hard enough to look like the fighter who once took Yan down until the judges had no choice.
The timing of the comments also matters. This is fight week for UFC 332 at the Delta Center, not fight week for Abu Dhabi. Dvalishvili is already on camera selling the next numbered card while Natalia Silva and Wang Cong get ready to fight for the vacant women’s flyweight title on Saturday.
His coach, John Wood, has already said this camp looks different and that Dvalishvili is as motivated as he has been since the title came off. Merab Dvalishvili’s own version is simpler. He wants people to doubt him again. He wants the pressure back. He wants Yan to walk into Etihad Arena as the favorite who already broke his face.
The first fight made Meran look like the future of the division. The second fight made Petr Yan look like the man who ended that run. The third fight on October 24 will decide which of those nights was the real series.
