The former bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili has brushed off Petr Yan’s trash talk ahead of their UFC 333 trilogy fight. He has stated the Russian is simply playing a familiar role. He insisted the verbal sparring will not determine the outcome. The two fighters meet for the 135-pound title in Abu Dhabi on Saturday. The rivalry is currently tied 1-1 after 10 completed rounds. That makes the third meeting the decisive chapter. Dvalishvili believes the answer will come inside the cage, not at the press conference.
Merab Dvalishvili stays cool as Petr Yan turns up the trash talk
Merab Dvalishvili’s remarks came after Petr Yan tried to needle him during the UFC 333 pre-fight press conference. Rather than firing back in kind, the Georgian kept his composure and framed Yan’s behaviour as part of a carefully managed public persona.
“He’s always been disrespectful. He talks s**t, and this doesn’t bother me anymore,” he stressed. “But even me, sometimes I have, like, a drama in the internet; people talking s**t about me about nothing. I’m just fighter, and I’m not a politician.”
Dvalishvili said, implying Yan understands how to control narratives and provoke reactions. He added that Yan’s remarks no longer affect him and that the cage would provide the real answer.
Yan, for his part, rejected the idea that he had been rude. “I was being real,” he said, arguing that Dvalishvili began making things up and that he simply told him to stop.
Petr Yan claims he has already broken Merab Dvalishvili mentally
The two have split their first two meetings. Merab Dvalishvili defeated Yan in 2023, and Yan lost that loss last December, with a commanding performance to regain the bantamweight title.
Yan believes the psychological edge is his. He said, “Most important is he himself knows that I humbled him” in their rematch. He was broken by the defeat, framing Saturday’s fight as another chance to expose the challenger’s weaknesses.
Dvalishvili sees it differently. He has promised to show Yan “tools” he hasn’t seen before, after spending three separate training camps preparing for the same opponent.
He has also kept his sense of humour intact. Asked how he would beat Yan, he joked that he would do what he always does: “I’m a decision machine.”
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