UFC 333 results: Volkanovski stops Evloev, Yan beats Merab again

That was the best card the UFC has put on in a while, and I'm not sure it's close. Fourteen fights at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, seven finishes, six of them in the first round, two champions who walked in holding belts and walked out still holding them, and three unbeaten records gone before the night was over. And at the top of UFC 333, the oldest man in the main event looked like the best one in the building.

Volkanovski, 38, does what nobody else could

Photo: NAPARAZZI / CC BY-SA 2.0

Here is the receipt that matters. Movsar Evloev came into his first title fight 20-0, and all ten of his UFC wins had gone to the scorecards. Ten fights, ten decisions, including a five-round majority over Lerone Murphy in March. Nobody had stopped him. Alexander Volkanovski stopped him at 4:54 of the second round, six seconds from the horn, and Marc Goddard waved it off.

It did not start like a coronation for the old man. Evloev landed three of his four takedown attempts in the first round, and the significant strikes were close (24 for Volkanovski, 20 for Evloev). Then the second round turned. Volkanovski landed 32 of 63 significant strikes in it, stuffed all three of Evloev's shots, got a takedown of his own and spent 86 seconds on top. By the end Evloev had landed 40 significant strikes for the night to Volkanovski's 56, and he was on the wrong side of the stoppage he had spent his whole career avoiding.

The market had this as a coin flip leaning slightly the other way: Volkanovski closed at -106, Evloev at -111, and Volkanovski by knockout sat at +430 with the fight going the distance at -250. Our model was less generous than either, giving the champion 34 percent. Volkanovski is now 29-4, 16-3 in the UFC, and this is his first stoppage win since he finished Yair Rodriguez in July 2023. Between those two nights he was knocked out twice, by Islam Makhachev and Ilia Topuria, and plenty of people (me included, on a bad day) wondered how much was left. A Performance of the Night bonus at 38 is a decent answer.

Evloev is 20-1, and he deserves better than to be remembered as the man who finally got finished. He was the number one contender for a reason. The question for featherweight is who is next, because the ranked list behind the champion just lost its cleanest case.

Yan wins the trilogy from two rounds down

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The co-main was the third fight between Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili, and the history matters. Dvalishvili won the first one 50-45 on all three cards in March 2023. Yan took the title from him at UFC 323 last December, 49-46, 49-46 and 48-47. Saturday was the tiebreaker, and for ten minutes it belonged to Dvalishvili.

All three judges, Darryl Ransom, David Lethaby and Vito Paolillo, gave Dvalishvili the first two rounds. All three gave Yan rounds three, four and five. Final: 48-47, 48-47, 48-47, Yan by unanimous decision. Dvalishvili landed five of 58 takedown attempts, four of the five in round two and none after it, and once those stopped landing the fight became Yan's. His best round was the last one, 52 significant strikes from 88 attempts. Over the full 25 minutes Dvalishvili actually out-landed him 131 to 128, on 363 attempts to Yan's 228, which tells you what kind of night it was for the challenger: enormous work, diminishing return.

I leaned toward the model's reading in the week of the fight, which had Dvalishvili at 57 percent while the market made Yan a -153 favorite. I was wrong, and the market was right. Fight of the Night went to both men, and Yan now leads the series 2-1 at 21-5. Dvalishvili, the top-ranked contender at bantamweight going in, is 21-6 with two straight losses to the same man. A fourth fight is a hard sell.

Thicknesse, Chopurov and the arithmetic of a split

The fight I keep coming back to was on the early prelims. Colby Thicknesse, a teammate of Volkanovski at Freestyle Fighting Gym, closed at +443 against Asaf Chopurov, an 11-0 debutant at -619. Our model, for what it's worth, had Thicknesse at 53 percent. Thicknesse won a split decision.

Here are the cards. Ben Cartlidge gave Chopurov round one and Thicknesse the other two. David Lethaby gave Thicknesse rounds one and two and Chopurov the third. Darryl Ransom gave Chopurov rounds one and three, and the fight, 29-28. Count the round votes across the panel and Chopurov won round one 2-1, lost round two 3-0 and won round three 2-1. Two rounds out of three. He still lost, because the rules add each judge's card up separately and two of those cards said Thicknesse.

That is not a robbery. It is arithmetic. Thicknesse out-landed him 77 to 54 in significant strikes; Chopurov had eight takedowns from 12 attempts and five minutes and one second of control to Thicknesse's three minutes and 14. In the third round alone Chopurov landed four takedowns and Thicknesse landed 20 significant strikes to 12. Two of three judges thought the takedowns won that round, and one of those two had already given Thicknesse the first. Ten-point-must scoring treats the panel as three separate fights, and on a night like this one it can hand the decision to the man who won fewer of the panel's rounds.

One fight earlier, Abubakar Vagaev went the other way with the same ingredients. Jacob Malkoun out-landed him 106 to 71, Vagaev had six takedowns, and all three judges gave Vagaev 29-28. If takedowns beat volume in one fight and lose to it in the next, the problem is not any single judge. It is that nobody has told them which matters more.

On to the rest of UFC 333

Photo: S.Troshchenko / CC BY-SA 4.0

• Lone'er Kavanagh knocked out Ramazan Temirov at 4:28 of the first, after a knockdown, and took the night's other Performance of the Night bonus. He was ranked sixth at flyweight and Temirov tenth, he was coming off a submission loss to Brandon Royval in July, and he is now 11-2. Temirov's three-fight UFC win streak is over at 20-4.
• Dominick Reyes closed as a +169 underdog against Azamat Murzakanov and needed 2:40 of the first round. One knockdown, 14 significant strikes to Murzakanov's three. Our model had Reyes at 58 percent. Murzakanov, unbeaten until April, has now been knocked out in back-to-back fights.
• Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev finished Nikita Krylov at 2:38 of round one as a -587 favorite. He is 11-0, and every fight since his Contender Series win has ended in the first round: two submissions and two knockouts in the UFC. The light heavyweight rankings should be paying attention.
• Alexander Volkov turned 38 on fight day and spent it beating Rizvan Kuniev 30-27, 30-27, 29-28. The second-ranked heavyweight out-landed the seventh 74 to 51 and Kuniev went 0 for 4 on takedowns. Three straight wins for Volkov, 41-11. Two 38-year-old Alexanders won on this card. Make of that what you will.
• Aaron Pico lost his ranked opponent when Arnold Allen came off the card in early October, got Losene Keita instead, and knocked him out in 74 seconds. Pico closed at -144 even though our model leaned Keita. He is 15-5.
• Abus Magomedov submitted Cam Rowston at 1:44 of the first. That is two first-round submissions in a row for the 12th-ranked middleweight, who is now 30-7-1.
• Grant Dawson beat Nurullo Aliev 29-27 on all three cards, and Aliev's 12-0 record went with it. Aliev was docked a point in round one for hitting the back of the head, which turned his 10-9 round into a 9-9 on every card, but it didn't decide anything: Dawson won the last two rounds everywhere, with five takedowns and 6:18 of control.
• Daniel Santos beat Bolaji Oki 29-28 on all three cards in a fight the market closed as a pick'em. Santos is 15-3.
• Kody Steele stopped Noah Gugnon at 3:54 of the first after a knockdown, and is 9-1.
• Iasmin Lucindo opened the night by beating Nicolle Caliari 30-27 three times, with 9:27 of control time in a 15-minute fight. Somebody had to make the first one quiet.

Three unbeaten records fell in Abu Dhabi, and the one that survived belongs to the fighter who has not seen a second round in the UFC. Volkanovski and Yan both earned the right to pick from a short list. The more interesting question is the one the early prelims raised: if a commission can't say whether a takedown is worth more than 23 extra strikes, how is the next Chopurov supposed to know what to do in the third round?