Yan vs. Dvalishvili 3 Becomes the UFC's 20th Trilogy

When bantamweight champion Petr Yan and former champion Merab Dvalishvili meet in the UFC 333 co-main event on Saturday in Abu Dhabi, it will be their third fight and the 20th trilogy contested entirely inside the UFC. The headliners, featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski and unbeaten challenger Movsar Evloev, are meeting for the first time, but Volkanovski already has a trilogy of his own on his record.

Lessons from 19 earlier trilogies

A look back at the 19 previous all-UFC trilogies shows how varied they have been. Some carried title stakes every time, others were driven purely by personal rivalry, and a few were one-sided. Of those 19 series, 11 ended with a finish in the third fight.

• Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture traded the light heavyweight title, with Couture winning the first and Liddell taking the next two by knockout. Couture, Tito Ortiz and Matt Hughes are the only fighters to appear in two UFC trilogies.
• Georges St-Pierre and Matt Hughes produced the only UFC trilogy with multiple submission finishes, both by armbar.
• Cain Velasquez lost to Junior dos Santos in about a minute, then beat him twice, and Stipe Miocic recovered from a knockout loss to Daniel Cormier the same way.
• BJ Penn finished his trilogy with Hughes with a 21-second knockout, the fastest finish in any UFC trilogy.
• Max Holloway became the first fighter to win a UFC trilogy after losing the first two meetings, beating Dustin Poirier in Poirier's retirement fight in July 2025.

The Volkanovski connection

Volkanovski beat Holloway in all three of their featherweight title fights, at UFC 245, UFC 251 and UFC 276. The record says 3-0, but it was not easy: in the second fight Holloway knocked him down in each of the first two rounds, and every meeting went the full five rounds. At 75 minutes of total cage time, it is the longest trilogy in UFC history. The co-main event cannot repeat that pattern, since Yan and Dvalishvili have already split their first two fights.

History offers one more data point for the decider: only two UFC trilogies ended with a finish after two straight decisions, and both involved Frankie Edgar, against BJ Penn and Gray Maynard. Whether Yan and Dvalishvili add a new chapter to that list will be settled on Saturday.