Petr Yan vs. Merab Dvalishvili: bantamweight co-main event preview at UFC 333

Merab Dvalishvili has 17 completed UFC bouts in the PropBetEdge archive: 14 wins and 3 losses. 2 of those wins came inside the distance (1 by KO/TKO and 1 by submission), a 14% finish rate on archived wins. He has been finished once in the archive. Most recently he lost to Petr Yan by unanimous decision in round 5 on Dec 6, 2025. That puts him 322 days out by fight night.

• L vs Petr Yan — unanimous decision, R5 (Dec 6, 2025, UFC 323: Dvalishvili vs. Yan 2)
• W vs Cory Sandhagen — unanimous decision, R5 (Oct 4, 2025, UFC 320: Ankalaev vs. Pereira 2)
• W vs Sean O'Malley — submission, R3 (Jun 7, 2025, UFC 316: Dvalishvili vs. O'Malley 2)
• W vs Umar Nurmagomedov — unanimous decision, R5 (Jan 18, 2025, UFC 311: Makhachev vs. Moicano)
• W vs Sean O'Malley — unanimous decision, R5 (Sep 14, 2024, UFC 306: Riyadh Season Noche UFC)

Both archives lean toward decisions (33% and 14% of wins finished), which points the other way on the distance question.

Style and statistical matchup

Petr Yan lands 5.16 significant strikes per minute at 54% accuracy; Merab Dvalishvili lands 4.42 at 41%. The two are close on volume, so neither side can expect to win rounds on activity alone. On the other side of the exchange, Petr Yan absorbs 4.24 per minute with 59% striking defence and Merab Dvalishvili absorbs 2.8 with 54%.

On the ground, Petr Yan averages 1.7 takedowns per 15 minutes at 49% accuracy and defends 86% of attempts against him; Merab Dvalishvili averages 5.97 at 35% and defends 76%. Petr Yan's 10-point takedown-defence edge is the grappling number to weigh: it limits how often the fight leaves the striking exchanges.

All of these are career-to-date PropSports round-statistics snapshots at capture, not as-of figures for this bout: they describe each fighter across every opponent, which is why the archive form above is read alongside them rather than replaced by them.

Round-level PropSports data exists for 58 archived rounds of Petr Yan's: 1456 of 2652 significant strikes landed (55%), 25.1 per round, 32 of 65 takedowns, 42:19 of control time and 10 knockdowns. Round-level PropSports data exists for 60 archived rounds of Merab Dvalishvili's: 1322 of 3181 significant strikes landed (42%), 22 per round, 119 of 338 takedowns, 107:25 of control time and 1 knockdown. Those samples are small and uneven, so they colour the career averages rather than override them.

What could break the angle

Here is where the read could be wrong. Career averages are career-to-date snapshots at capture; they include fights outside this matchup context and are not as-of figures. There is also no odds snapshot in PropBetEdge data for this bout, so nothing above can be checked against a market yet; the read describes what to look for, not where value sits. A late weigh-in miss, a replacement or a change in scheduled rounds would each invalidate parts of it.

Final read

On the data, neither fighter carries a material edge into this one; the tape is close and the archive does not separate them. The uncertainty is ordinary fight variance rather than missing data. What to monitor: the five-round format holding, the weigh-in, and once a price exists, where the fight goes the distance and total rounds markets open relative to this read. No model price or market line exists in PropBetEdge data for this bout, so this is not a pick; the Bettor's Edge panel above carries the impact score and the markets connected to the evidence.

Matchup page: Petr Yan vs. Merab Dvalishvili · Full card: UFC 333: Volkanovski vs. Evloev · Fighter pages: Petr Yan, Merab Dvalishvili.