Merab Dvalishvili came up short in his bid to become the first champion in UFC history to defend his title four times in the same calendar year after falling to Petr Yan in the UFC 323 main event on Saturday
night.
Despite a valiant effort, Dvalishvili absorbed more punishment during the five round fight with Yan working diligently to defend takedowns and use a nasty striking arsenal to repeatedly hurt the Georgian fighter. When it was over, Yan claimed victory with a unanimous decision win to become a two-time UFC bantamweight champion while Dvalishvili is now left to figure out where it all went wrong after he started his year with a perfect 3-0 record in title fights.
“Obviously, a very rough weekend. It sucks,” Dvalishvili’s head coach John Wood told MMA Fighting on Monday. “It’s a heartbreaker but it is the sport. You’ve got to take the bad with the good and I don’t want to be a guy that’s just riding high and mighty when we’re winning because unfortunately, the other half is you’re going to lose. You’re going to have bad times and good times and we just try to come back and get better and figure out how to mitigate and shrink the bad times.
“I haven’t rewatched [the fight] yet. It’s been balls to the wall for me traveling and taking care of some stuff I needed to take care of directly after the fight so I really haven’t [had a chance to watch it]. I like to take a day or two and kind of decompress so I don’t watch it too emotionally. I’ll probably watch it tomorrow.”
While far from a blowout by any means, the real difference in the fight came down to Yan’s ability to inflict damage, especially with some brutal body shots that had Dvalishvili reeling in a couple of rounds.
Those key moments really made the difference and Wood acknowledges that Yan did a great job controlling his output and then taking advantage of the moments when he really unleashed his best shots that ultimately hurt Dvalishvili the most.
“I thought we were winning and controlling and I thought we were pressing and doing what we needed to do,” Wood explained. “Petr definitely had the bigger moments and I think that shifted [the fight] and you just don’t know. There’s times where judges they don’t care, you don’t get that, you don’t see that. But he had the bigger moments in those things and that really did account in the damage and the blood, those were the things that added up and took over. That was my bad for not having a little bit more control on the optics there of what we were doing. But again, a fight’s a fight. You just sometimes, it doesn’t go the way you want it to go.
“It sucks. It’s like waking up from a nightmare. This doesn’t go away. I thought we had the right things going on in this camp and it was a quick camp and it was a hard camp. There’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes. But it was Petr’s night.”
A huge part of the narrative coming out of the fight on Saturday was Dvalishvili pushing so hard to get a fourth title defense in 2025 after already winning three fights against Umar Nurmagomedov, Sean O’Malley and Cory Sandhagen.
The win over Sandhagen came in early October and then Dvalishvili made the quick turnaround to get right back into training camp to prepare for his rematch against Yan at UFC 323.
Wood addressed the criticisms that perhaps Dvalishvili should have hit the brakes after three fights rather than insisting on a fourth before the year was over.
“There’s several responses I could have and for me, it’s not my place,” Wood said. “I’m just the guy behind the guy. Merab makes that decision. Ultimately, it’s his career. He’s in charge of the final decisions on those things. Again, up until this, we didn’t know. We didn’t know how this was going to go down. It hadn’t been done before. He hadn’t done it.
“Do I think we could have done some things different? Yes. Do I think that having to do it all over again would he do any different? No, I don’t think so. The man is chasing greatness. When you’re chasing greatness, when you’re chasing to be special, these are the kinds of things that sometimes don’t go your way. I think it’s just another chapter in the story that’s going to end up really good for him in the end.”
Wood acknowledged that Dvalishvili preparing for four title fights in the same year, which meant four training camps and ultimately spending nearly 90 minutes in the octagon, is definitely taxing but it’s a challenge the now former UFC bantamweight champion wanted to take on.
But his coach admits that there’s so much more to Dvalishvili’s reign as champion that keeps him busy that has nothing to do with just spending hours in the gym getting ready for a fight.
“The only thing I will say is it’s a lot,” Wood said. “It’s a lot for anything and what people don’t realize, too, is being a champion and a dominant champion and a champion that’s defending [the title] and working, there’s so much more that comes with it. All the press, all the interviews, all the travel. It’s 100 times more than just any regular fight and that adds up. It all adds up.
“Merab, he’s a true champion and embraces it all and does everything that everybody asks of him. Again, I don’t think he would change chasing those achievements he wants to chase and who’s to tell him different. It’s his life. It’s his career.”
Of course, Wood knows if Dvalishvili won on Saturday night, the headlines would all center around praising him for taking such a risk and coming out on top as the first UFC champion to ever defend his title four times in the same year.
“He’s daring to be great,” Wood said. “Could we have done things different? Of course, hindsight 20/20. He goes out there and wins that fight it’s ‘oh my god, the most amazing thing!’ We’re not obviously having any of these conversations and he’s a legend but it didn’t go that way and sometimes that’s the way it happens.
“People are going to have their opinions and they’re free to have that. They’re free to form their opinion and say what they want to say but a lot of them aren’t involved in what goes on in any kind of fight camp or anything anyways. There’s a lot more to it than just hey we should have done this or we should have done that., There’s a lot that goes into it and I’m proud of Merab. [But] I need to have that conversation with him first before I go out and make any kind of bold statements on this, that and the other. Because maybe he felt fantastic and Petr was just better. I don’t know. We’ll have that talk shortly and we’ll kind of evaluate from there.”
Dvalishvili posted a lengthy message on social media on Monday addressing the loss and promising to “come back stronger” with plans to reclaim his bantamweight title.
Emotionally, Wood knows his fighter is going through a lot right now but he fully expects the loss to serve as the ultimate motivation to get even better when he returns to action in 2026.
“Is he hurting inside? I’m sure,” Wood said. “It would be crazy to think he’s not. But he accepts it and I guarantee you this guy is going to come back crazy strong and better for this. He’s just a guy, he’s had a blessed life and he’s worked hard to get it.
“It really does hurt. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. This is one of those things where I take a few days to kind of feel it, go through the emotions and this one sucks.”
As far as what comes next, Wood definitely expects Dvalishvili to earn an immediate rematch, especially after the year he put together prior to the loss at UFC 323.
Add to that, Dvalishvili already holds a past win over Yan so the series is now tied at 1-1 and Wood believes a trilogy is needed to truly settle the score once and for all.
“There’s no doubt you will [see it again],” Wood said. “I’m sure that it might already be being talked about. It’s one of those things, two great fights and Petr coming out and performing like that against somebody that everybody thought was unstoppable at that time, sets up a huge trilogy.
“That was a great fight, which is crazy because again, I think I was so in the moment round-by-round, I didn’t realize it was what people were calling it. [Saying it was] Fight of the Year, it was a phenomenal fight. So I mean who’s not going to want to see that again? Those are two guys that leave it all out there that are fighter’s fighters. There is no doubt in my mind in 2026, you will see the trilogy for sure.”
