This past Saturday night in the main event of UFC 323, we saw a rematch for the bantamweight title. Merab Dvalishvili (21-5) was looking to pick up his second win over Petr Yan (20-5) while also defending his title for the fourth time in 2025.
Dvalishvili has completely lived up to his nickname over the last fifteen months. He defeated Sean O’Malley as last year’s Noche UFC event to become champion. Then he defended the title against Umar Nurmagomedov, O’Malley, and Cory Sandhagen all in 2024.
The Sandhagen title fight was just back in October and immediately after that fight, Dvalishvili went to the UFC and said he wanted to fight again in December. He wanted to become the first champion to defend his title four times inside a calendar year.
Well, Dvalishvili might’ve bitten off more than he could chew. Dvalishvili started decent in his fight with Yan, but Saturday night was all about Petr Yan. Yan was crisper on the feet and Dvalishvili couldn’t take him down.
Even more shocking, Yan never slowed down. Yan had all the answers for Merab Dvalishvili and he once again became the UFC bantamweight champion.
What’s next after UFC 323?
After stepping up and having the year that he had for the UFC, I think that Dvalishvili absolutely deserves an immediate rematch for his title. However, I’m not sure he should rush into that fight. As mentioned, Dvalishvili had five title fights in the span of 15 months.
That’s so much on his body and we know the kind of work that Dvalishvili puts in. It was reported that he sparred without headgear the morning of the fight on Saturday night. I’m not convinced he does, but I think he should give himself a couple of months to recover from this insane stretch.
Should he take some time, I think the UFC might book Yan against someone else in the meantime and that’s okay. No matter what, I think Dvalishvili should go right back into a title fight just like we saw with Alex Pereira when he lost the light heavyweight title after that insane stretch of activity.
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