UFC 333 Predictions: Volkanovski vs Evloev And Every Fight On The Card
Two world titles on one card, and both of them built on a number. Alexander Volkanovski, 38 and in his twelfth consecutive title fight, defends the featherweight belt against Movsar Evloev, who is 20-0 and has won all ten of his UFC fights on the scorecards. Beneath it, Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili meet for the third time, 1-1 and for the bantamweight belt for the second, after a rematch in December in which the takedowns that won Dvalishvili the first fight stopped landing β two of 29.
It is the Etihad Arena's sixth October numbered card in a row, a year to the weekend after UFC 321, and the card has lost one bout since it was announced in August: Arnold Allen withdrew from the Aaron Pico fight in September, still recovering from earlier treatment, and Losene Keita took it the same day. The early prelims filled in through late September and October β VagaevβMalkoun first, then OkiβSantos, SteeleβGugnon and LucindoβCaliari, and ThicknesseβChopurov last β which is why the card reads fourteen fights.
Fourteen fights, then, starting at 6pm in Abu Dhabi with the early prelims β 3pm in the UK, 10am in New York β and reaching the main card at 10pm local time, which is 7pm on Saturday evening in the UK and Ireland and 2pm Eastern. We've gone through every one of them in running order, with a pick, a confidence figure and a note on where our eyes and the odds disagree. The weigh-in is Friday morning; nothing below assumes it.
Every record, height, reach and age in the tapes below is read live from our own ledger, beside the best price we hold on each bout, and every fight we hold links straight to that bout on its card. The words stand as written on the day at the foot of this page; the tapes keep moving with the card. Bottom of the card first.
14Iasmin Lucindo vs Nicolle Caliari
Women's Strawweight Β· EARLY PRELIMS
Iasmin Lucindo 1.28 favouriteNicolle Caliari 3.8518-6-0RECORD9-4-05β²3β³HEIGHT5β²3β³66β³REACH62β³24AGE29Twenty-four fights at 24, fourteen months out, and a first fight back against a woman who shoots for everything.
Lucindo turned professional at fifteen and this is her twenty-fifth fight. The UFC half of her record is 5-2 and almost entirely decisions: a shutout of Karolina Kowalkiewicz, a split over Marina Rodriguez, a second-round arm-triangle on Polyana Viana, and, in August last year, three takedowns and five and a half minutes of control on Angela Hill. The two defeats were a volume loss on her debut at twenty to Yazmin Jauregui and a grappling fight with Amanda Lemos that she lost 29-28 on every card while landing four strikes in fifteen minutes. In the UFC she has never been knocked down or finished.
She was ranked seventh when a sample taken last September tested positive for an anabolic steroid. The anti-doping programme accepted that a compounded supplement from a Brazilian pharmacy could not be ruled out as the source and gave her nine months rather than twelve; she has been eligible since June and is off the rankings board. This is her first fight in fourteen months.
Caliari is 29, a karate champion first, and has never won a fight on the scorecards: nine wins, nine finishes. In the UFC she is 1-2, both losses at flyweight β a split decision to Ernesta Kareckaite on her debut, in which she landed three takedowns of fourteen, and a third-round stoppage by Carli Judice after absorbing 109 strikes β and the win was at this weight in May: nine minutes on top of Shauna Bannon and an arm-triangle in the third. She has landed eight takedowns of 31 in the UFC. When she gets one she keeps it; mostly she does not get one.
The Lemos fight is Caliari's blueprint and Lucindo's warning. The difference is that Lemos lands her takedowns, and Caliari lands a quarter of hers; a failed shot leaves her at distance against the better striker, with a four-inch reach disadvantage, or underneath a fighter who has her own arm-triangle. The layoff is the only reason this is not shorter.
PickLucindo, decision72%
13Kody Steele vs Noah Gugnon
Lightweight Β· EARLY PRELIMS
Kody Steele 1.62 favouriteNoah Gugnon 2.308-1-0RECORD10-2-05β²9β³HEIGHT5β²11β³71β³REACH71β³31AGE26A jiu-jitsu black belt who once chose to brawl, against a Frenchman who has never heard a final bell he won.
Steele is 31, from Port Angeles, Washington, a Combat Jiu-Jitsu world champion and a former high-school wrestler, and his two UFC fights could not have been more different. In the first he stood and traded with Rongzhu for fifteen minutes, absorbed 125 significant strikes, was knocked down, lost 30-27 on every card and collected a Fight of the Night bonus for it. In the second, in May, he took Dom Mar Fan down once and finished him with a heel hook inside four minutes. He was pulled from an August bout for a reason nobody has given.
Gugnon is 26, from Moselle, and every one of his ten wins is a finish β six knockouts, four rear-naked chokes, seven of them inside a round. He has never won a decision; he has lost one, and been stopped once, under elbows in Bellator in 2023. His debut in August took 81 seconds: a calf kick buckled MiloΕ‘ JaniΔiΔ, a takedown, the back, the choke. Asked about Steele's grappling this week he conceded it and reframed it: we don't do grappling, he said, we do MMA. Ground strikes change the sport.
They do, and they are Gugnon's route: hurt the lead leg of a man who wants to shoot, and punish him if he does. Steele's route is the one he talked about after the Rongzhu fight and took against Mar Fan β a takedown, not a pocket exchange, and a leg entanglement or the back once it is down. Nobody has tried a takedown on Steele in the UFC, and Gugnon's whole UFC career is 81 seconds with none tried on him, so the grappling exchange is the fight. We trust the black belt to find it, and the French power to make the first two minutes uncomfortable.
PickSteele, submission55%
12Bolaji Oki vs Daniel Santos
Featherweight Β· EARLY PRELIMS
Bolaji Oki 1.98Daniel Santos 1.83 favourite10-4-0RECORD14-3-05β²10β³HEIGHT5β²7β³73β³REACH67β³30AGE31A volume striker on a two-fight losing run drops a division to meet a body-puncher with a weigh-in history of his own.
Oki is a Brussels lightweight by trade and this is the first featherweight bout of his UFC run. The numbers say why: he lands more than six significant strikes a minute, nine in ten of them at distance, and he absorbs more than five, has been dropped three times and finished in three of his five Octagon fights. The last two are the problem β Mason Jones elbowed him out from mount in Paris after Oki had dropped him in the first half-minute, and in March Manoel Sousa knocked him out with 48 seconds left in a fight Oki was ahead in on the count. His wins are a split over Timmy Cuamba and 136 strikes landed on Michael Aswell Jr., and both went the distance.
Santos is five foot seven with a 67-inch reach, trains at Chute Boxe in SΓ£o Paulo, and hits the body. He had won four in a row β John Castaneda, ten minutes on top of Johnny Munoz, JeongYeong Lee and a 21-second second round against JooSang Yoo at a catchweight after both men missed 145 β before Dooho Choi sat him down with a body shot in May, a Fight of the Night he had been winning for a round. He has also skipped a weigh-in altogether, in April last year, for a medical reason never explained. Friday morning matters for both men here.
Oki has six inches of reach on Santos, and his jab and leg kicks will keep Santos on the end of it early. The question is the one both his knockout losses asked β whether the chin and the lungs hold once the first round is gone against a man who walks through the early going and has dropped two opponents in the Octagon. We think they don't, quite.
PickSantos, decision or a late stoppage56%
11Abubakar Vagaev vs Jacob Malkoun
Middleweight Β· EARLY PRELIMS
Abubakar Vagaev 1.65 favouriteJacob Malkoun 2.2525-4-0RECORD10-3-05β²11β³HEIGHT5β²9β³73β³REACH73β³33AGE31A welterweight moving up against a middleweight with a black belt, and the market has the lighter man.
Vagaev is 33, from Grozny, trains with Khamzat Chimaev at Akhmat, and was a two-time ACA welterweight champion before the UFC. His one Octagon fight was in Abu Dhabi in July: a 29-28 over Saygid Izagakhmaev built on four takedowns and nearly eight minutes of control, and a third round in which he was hurt by a right hand, taken down, survived an arm-triangle and gave up mount, the back and an armbar attempt at the bell. He was not happy with it. Twenty of his 25 wins are decisions; he has been knocked out three times; and this is his first bout at 185 lb in either of our ledgers.
Malkoun is a natural middleweight, Robert Whittaker's main training partner, a jiu-jitsu black belt and an ADCC regional champion, and on a three-fight winning run either side of two years out with a back injury: a bizarre second-round stoppage of Andre Petroski, then in January 117 strikes landed and a knockdown on the unbeaten Torrez Finney, then Gerald Meerschaert in May at a catchweight Meerschaert made necessary. His losses are an 18-second knockout on his debut, a decision to Brendan Allen and a disqualification. Only nine takedowns have ever been attempted on him in the UFC, and four landed, which is the number Vagaev is here to test.
He will test it harder than anyone has. But Vagaev brings almost no volume β 27 strikes landed in fifteen minutes in July β and a smaller man who gets stalled on the trips is in Malkoun's jab for the rest of the round, and in the scrambles of a black belt two fights back from two years out. We lean against the price, narrowly.
PickMalkoun, decision52%
10Colby Thicknesse vs Asaf Chopurov
Bantamweight Β· EARLY PRELIMS
Colby Thicknesse 5.10Asaf Chopurov 1.17 favourite9-1-0RECORD11-0-05β²7β³HEIGHT5β²7β³69β³REACHN/A27AGE24The shortest price on the card is on a man with no UFC tape at all.
Chopurov is 24, Azerbaijani, trains in Volgograd under the kickboxer Chingiz Allazov, and counts Petr Yan, who defends his belt in this card's co-main event, as a training partner. Eleven wins, ten of them finishes, seven inside the first round, the last three with the UAE Warriors bantamweight title on the line in the Emirates β the most recent a 63-second knockout of Reece McLaren, a former ONE title challenger, in July. He was signed at the end of September and this bout was added to the card on 14 October. None of it is in our ledger yet, which is why his tape above holds a silhouette and a record and not much else.
Thicknesse has been Alexander Volkanovski's training partner at Freestyle Fighting Gym since he was thirteen, and this is his first UFC fight outside Australia. Three UFC bouts, three decisions: shut out by Aleksandre Topuria on fourteen days' notice in his debut, then 29-28s over Josias Musasa and Vince Morales in Perth, the second of them nearly a first-round submission that Volkanovski was sure had been tapped. He has landed two takedowns of 28 in the UFC and been held down for long stretches when a grappler wanted to, but he has never been finished, as a professional or an amateur, and he is dangerous off his back.
Everything about Chopurov's price is built on regional tape and an amateur pedigree, and that is the honest objection to it: a debutant this short has to be exactly what the highlights say. We think he is, mostly. He pressures early and hunts the neck, and Thicknesse concedes takedowns. If the first five minutes go as the scouting suggests, this ends in a rear-naked choke or a flurry; if Thicknesse survives them unhurt, nobody has seen Chopurov answer a cardio question at this level.
PickChopurov, stoppage inside two rounds75%
9Grant Dawson vs Nurullo Aliev
Lightweight Β· PRELIMS
Grant Dawson 1.90 favouriteNurullo Aliev 2.0024-3-1RECORD12-0-05β²10β³HEIGHT5β²10β³72β³REACH72β³32AGE25Two grapplers, and the first wrestling exchange of each round decides it.
Dawson is 32, unranked, and has lost two UFC fights in fifteen β both of them first-round knockouts, to King Green in 33 seconds in the only main event he has been given and to Manuel Torres last December. Between and since, he has done what he always does: he took Diego Ferreira down six times, held Joe Solecki for nearly fourteen minutes of fifteen, and in May submitted Mateusz Rebecki in the third round after being dropped in the second. Over his career he controls the fight for 65% of its length and has attempted fourteen submissions. He has never lost a decision and never been submitted.
Aliev is 25, the first Tajikistani in the UFC, and 4-0 in it without a finish or a knockdown either way. He wrestles from the first second β eight takedowns of thirteen and more than twelve minutes on top of Mike Davis in Abu Dhabi in July, three of four on Rafael Alves in his debut β and lands under two significant strikes a minute while doing it. The one night it didn't work, Shem Rock stuffed four of five and Aliev won the decision on the feet anyway, out-landing him 51 to 44. Aliev beat Solecki too, less thoroughly than Dawson did.
The line turned to Dawson ten days out, and we agree with it. Aliev is the cleaner wrestler and the harder man to take down; Dawson is the busier one, the more dangerous on the floor from either position, and the one with a submission game Aliev has not met. Dawson's first-round fragility is real, but it has been exposed by punchers, and Aliev has not knocked anybody down in the UFC. Three rounds of scrambles, the man who finishes them on top takes the round.
PickDawson, decision55%
8Abus Magomedov vs Cam Rowston
Middleweight Β· PRELIMS
Abus Magomedov 1.79 favouriteCam Rowston 2.0229-7-1RECORD15-3-06β²2β³HEIGHT6β²3β³78β³REACH78β³36AGE31The twelfth-ranked middleweight, after a win that had him calling for Adesanya, is given an unranked Australian on a seven-fight run instead.
Magomedov is 36, Chechen-born and German, and his UFC record is 5-3 with the losses all to men now ranked above him: Sean Strickland, in a main event that carried Magomedov's name three years ago and the belt's current owner; Caio Borralho on short notice; and Joe Pyfer, who cranked him in the second after Magomedov had controlled the first. The wins are a 19-second knockout of Dustin Stoltzfus on his debut, twelve minutes on top of Warlley Alves, an arm-triangle on Brunno Ferreira in this building, a 30-27 striking match with Michel Pereira, and in June a knockdown and a first-round guillotine on Michal Oleksiejczuk. He stops seven of every eight takedowns tried on him.
Rowston is 31, from Sydney, a City Kickboxing fighter with a kickboxing title and a jiu-jitsu brown belt, and 3-0 in the UFC, all three at home: Andre Petroski in under three minutes on his debut, Cody Brundage in the second round, and in May ten minutes of top control on Robert Bryczek for a 30-27 shutout. Nearly half of what he has landed in the Octagon has been from the top. Seven in a row since a Contender Series loss in 2024; before that he had lost twice, the first time, nine years ago, to Jacob Malkoun, who fights three bouts earlier on this card. This is his first UFC fight outside Australia. He is an inch taller; the reach is level.
Rowston's UFC wins were built on top position, and Magomedov is the first opponent who will not give him the floor. Standing, the two land the same share of what they throw; the Australian throws twice as much and is hit less. We expect Magomedov to wrestle enough to take two rounds and tire in the third, and the fight to hinge on whether Rowston can do anything with that third.
PickMagomedov, decision55%
7Nikita Krylov vs Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev
Light Heavyweight Β· PRELIMS
Nikita Krylov 4.60Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev 1.20 favourite31-12-0RECORD10-0-06β²3β³HEIGHT6β²2β³77.5β³REACH78β³34AGE25Three UFC fights, three minutes and thirty-three seconds of cage time, and a veteran who has been stopped in three of his last four.
Yakhyaev is 25, Chechen-born, fights under the Turkish flag out of Nuremberg, and has not needed a second round in the UFC: a rear-naked choke on Rafael Cerqueira in 33 seconds, another on Brendson Ribeiro, and in June in Baku an eight-second knockout of Julius Walker, the joint second-fastest finish in the division's history. Ten wins, nine stoppages, eight of them in the first round; two-thirds of the strikes he has landed in the Octagon were on the floor. He has been past the second round once as a professional.
Krylov is 34, the fifteenth-ranked light heavyweight, and in his twenty-third UFC fight. Twelve wins, ten losses, and eighteen of the twenty-two have ended inside the distance. The last four tell the story: Reyes and Bogdan Guskov both knocked him out in the first round last year, he knocked out Modestas Bukauskas with three seconds left in January, and in July Robert Whittaker stopped him in the third of a fight he was competitive in until it ended. The ledger still holds the version of him that triangled Ryan Spann in 3:38 and took Volkan Oezdemir down seven times; the newer of the two is three and a half years old.
The price is as short as any on the card bar Chopurov's, and it is probably right. Yakhyaev is a faster, younger version of the thing that has been beating Krylov, and Krylov's path β survive the first storm, drag a man who has been there once as a professional and never in the UFC into the third round, find a neck β needs a chin that has given out three times in eighteen months.
PickYakhyaev, stoppage, round one72%
6Azamat Murzakanov vs Dominick Reyes
Light Heavyweight Β· PRELIMS
Azamat Murzakanov 1.45 favouriteDominick Reyes 2.7516-1-0RECORD16-5-05β²10β³HEIGHT6β²4β³71.5β³REACH77β³37AGE36Two southpaws in their late thirties, and the loser is probably out of the top ten.
Reyes has been knocked out four times and, in between, has looked like the most dangerous man in the division. He took Jon Jones to a decision in 2020 that plenty of people still score his way, lost the fight for the vacant belt to Jan Blachowicz in Abu Dhabi seven months later, and was then stopped by Jiri Prochazka and Ryan Spann β four defeats in a row, the last of them in 80 seconds. Nineteen months out with a blood clot followed, and then the comeback nobody expected: Dustin Jacoby, Anthony Smith and Nikita Krylov, all three stopped, Krylov in 2:24. Then Carlos Ulberg put him down in 4:27 of a main event, and in April he beat Johnny Walker on a split decision in a fight he was out-landed in, 42 to 34, and booed for.
Murzakanov was 16-0 until April, when Paulo Costa's head kick in the third round stopped him on the same card. Before it: six UFC wins, five by stoppage, a knockdown in every one of them, and a 3:11 knockout of Aleksandar Rakic in this building a year ago, landed while he was behind on the strike count. Low volume, 56% accurate, long stretches of reading a man and then something sudden. He has been taken down once in nine attempts.
Reyes has six inches of height, five and a half of reach and the higher output. What he does not have is a reliable chin against clean power, and clean power after a wait is Murzakanov's whole game. The Walker fight showed Reyes can win rounds from range without engaging, and that is his route: three rounds at distance, five strikes a minute, no exchanges. We think he gets caught somewhere in the middle round.
PickMurzakanov, KO/TKO60%
5Aaron Pico vs Losene Keita
Featherweight Β· MAIN CARD
Aaron Pico 1.76 favouriteLosene Keita 2.0714-5-0RECORD17-2-05β²8β³HEIGHT5β²9β³70β³REACH72β³30AGE28A replacement who has never been knocked out, against a favourite who has.
This was Pico against Arnold Allen until 18 September, when Allen withdrew β still recovering from earlier treatment, by the reports, and short of the time to be ready β and Keita, who had offered himself the day before to any ranked featherweight at short notice, was named the same day. Five weeks' notice, seven after his last fight.
Pico is 30 and has been a prospect for nine years. Sixteen fights in Bellator, a UFC debut that ended in a 3:21 knockout by Lerone Murphy, and then the best win of his career: a unanimous decision over Patricio Pitbull in April, 100 significant strikes landed and six takedowns of thirteen. Every defeat he has taken was a stoppage, four of the five inside the first round. He is a wrestler-boxer with heavy hands who gets hit too much β the bouts we chart have him blocking 44% of what comes back β and a three-round fight with him is a question about his chin before it is a question about anything else.
Keita's chin has never been cracked. Born in Guinea, raised in Paris and then in Belgium, he held OKTAGON titles in two divisions and arrived in the UFC a year ago by missing weight: three pounds over for his first booking, which was pulled. Two clean cuts since. He lost his debut to Nathaniel Wood on a split decision in London, out-landed 67 to 52 over fifteen minutes, and answered in Paris in September with two knockdowns and a 2:54 knockout of Muhammad Naimov. His only stoppage loss, in seventeen wins and two defeats, was a leg injury against Mate Sanikidze in 2023. He has attempted no takedown in the UFC and faced one.
Pico's wrestling is the fight. If he puts Keita on the floor, nothing in the record says Keita gets up; if he stands at a two-inch reach disadvantage and trades with a man who lands 58% of what he throws, he is the one with five stoppage losses. He took Pitbull down six times. We expect him to try that first.
PickPico, decision55%
4Alexander Volkov vs Rizvan Kuniev
Heavyweight Β· MAIN CARD
Alexander Volkov 1.80 favouriteRizvan Kuniev 2.0440-11-0RECORD14-3-16β²7β³HEIGHT6β²4β³80β³REACH76β³37AGE34Volkovβs twentieth UFC fight, a month short of ten years, with a title shot somewhere behind it.
The heavyweight title picture is this: Tom Aspinall vacated the belt in September, Ciryl Gane holds the interim one, and Gane fights Josh Hokit for the undisputed title at UFC 334 in November. Volkov is ranked second and has been here before β he lost a split decision to Gane in December 2024 that nineteen of twenty media scorecards gave him, and Gane went to a title shot off it. Since then he has beaten Jailton Almeida on a split decision in this arena, conceding seven takedowns, and Waldo Cortes Acosta comfortably in May. Six wins in his last seven. He turns 38 on fight night.
Kuniev is ranked seventh, 2-1 in the UFC, and has never been finished. He lost a split decision to Curtis Blaydes in Baku on his debut, then beat the same Almeida who troubled Volkov, stuffing all eight takedowns, and in July stopped Tyrell Fortune in the third round here, out-landing him 66 to 20. The shared opponents favour him. He is a clinch and pressure fighter β a third of what he lands comes in the clinch β who has attempted three takedowns in the UFC and landed one, which is not the man Volkov described this week when he said he expected to be clinched and taken down.
Volkov has three inches of height and four of reach and uses them: five significant strikes a minute at 58% across nineteen UFC fights, almost all of it at distance. The case for him is that Kuniev has to walk through that to get to the fence, and that Kuniev out-landing Fortune is not the same as out-landing a man who has been in the UFC since 2016. The case against is his last four results, two of them split and one of those a loss, and a birthday on the night. We lean to the jab, narrowly.
PickVolkov, decision55%
3Lone'er Kavanagh vs Ramazan Temirov
Flyweight Β· MAIN CARD
Lone'er Kavanagh 1.94Ramazan Temirov 1.91 favourite10-2-0RECORD20-3-05β²6β³HEIGHT5β²4β³67β³REACH63β³27AGE29A coin flip between the sixth-ranked flyweight and the tenth, and the winner is a contender.
Kavanagh is 27, London-born, and 3-2 in the UFC in a way that reads better than the record. The two wins that matter are a five-round decision over Brandon Moreno in Mexico City, a main event he took on short notice and won 49-46 on one card, and before it Felipe dos Santos in London. The two losses are the problem: Charles Johnson knocked him out in Shanghai in a fight he was winning, and in July Brandon Royval took him down, mounted him and choked him in the third round after Kavanagh had put Royval down in the second. Big shots, wild shots, his own description of his opponent; it applies both ways.
Temirov is 29, Uzbek, on a twelve-fight winning streak, and 3-0 in the UFC with two first-round knockouts: three knockdowns of CJ Vergara in his debut and, in July in this building, Steve Erceg dropped with the first punch of the fight and finished at 4:21. The one that went the distance was the same Charles Johnson, who out-landed him 66 to 55 and lost all three cards. Five knockdowns scored in the UFC, none taken; four takedowns attempted on him, four stuffed. He has fought once since March 2025 β a year's anti-doping suspension kept him out until the Erceg fight β so the sample is small.
Kavanagh has two inches of height, four of reach and the better accuracy; Temirov has the power and the volume. It will be fought at distance, where Kavanagh wants it and where Temirov hurts people, and the man with the reach was dropped by a lesser puncher than this one. We make it close to even and lean to the hands.
PickTemirov, KO/TKO inside two rounds52%
2Petr Yan vs Merab Dvalishvili
Bantamweight Β· TITLE Β· MAIN CARD
Petr Yan 1.60 favouriteMerab Dvalishvili 2.4020-5-0RECORD21-5-05β²7β³HEIGHT5β²6β³67β³REACH68β³33AGE35The third fight, and the whole of it is one number: eleven takedowns of 49, then two of 29.
They are 1-1, and the two fights could not have been less alike. In March 2023, in a non-title bout, Dvalishvili took Yan down eleven times, controlled him for nearly seven minutes and swept the cards 50-45. Last December, with the belt on the line at UFC 323, Yan stuffed 27 of 29 takedowns, took Dvalishvili down five times himself, out-landed him 139 to 134 while throwing 153 fewer strikes β 60% to 35% β bloodied his nose, hurt him to the body and won 49-46, 49-46, 48-47. It was the Fight of the Night, and it was not close.
Dvalishvili's explanation, in his own words, is that he was too relaxed, trained hard but not smart, and fought Yan's fight; the two months between fights he mentions and declines to blame. The calendar is the ledger's: four title fights in eleven months β Umar Nurmagomedov in January, a third-round choke of Sean O'Malley in June, twenty takedowns on Cory Sandhagen in October, Yan nine weeks later β and he has said that when one shot in the second round was stuffed and emptied him, he decided he was not going to win and enjoyed the fight instead. This time, by his own account, he has had a full camp in Las Vegas and a new wrestling coach. The correction the numbers ask for is to strike off the takedowns rather than mix them in. He is 35. His takedown rate over his last five fights has slipped from six every fifteen minutes to five, and his control share from 36% of the fight to 30%. He has still landed 119 takedowns in the Octagon, more than anyone in UFC history.
Yan's numbers are a champion's: more than five significant strikes a minute at 55%, ten knockdowns scored to one taken, takedown defence of 86% across 169 attempts, and nobody has ever knocked him out or submitted him. Since the first Dvalishvili fight he has beaten Song Yadong, Deiveson Figueiredo over five rounds, Marcus McGhee and then Dvalishvili. The unknown is his back. He had lumbar surgery in January β nine hours under anaesthetic, by his own account β and this is his first fight since, 322 days after the last. He prepared for a month at the Olympic base in Kislovodsk and then in Dubai against wrestlers brought in to shoot at him. A back is a wrestler's lever, and Dvalishvili will pull on it from the first minute.
The case for Dvalishvili is the 2023 fight and a rested body: chain the shots, get Yan to the fence, make it 413 seconds of control again. The case for Yan is that the 2025 fight was the one with the belt on the line and he won it in every phase, including the wrestling. Rounds one and two will tell us which version has turned up; if Dvalishvili is landing takedowns, the fight is his, and if he is not, Yan will make every shot cost him.
We make the champion about a 60% winner, below where the books have him, and the surgery is the whole of the discount.
PickYan, decision60%
1Alexander Volkanovski vs Movsar Evloev
MAIN EVENT Β· Featherweight Β· TITLE
Alexander Volkanovski 1.91Movsar Evloev 1.9128-4-0RECORD20-0-05β²6β³HEIGHT5β²7β³71.5β³REACH72.5β³38AGE32A 38-year-old champion who promises a finish, against a challenger who has never had one in the UFC.
Volkanovski is in his twelfth consecutive title fight. Eleven so far, eight won and three lost: two to Islam Makhachev at lightweight β a decision in Perth and a first-round knockout in this arena three years ago this week β and the one to Ilia Topuria that took the belt, four months later. Knocked out twice in a row at 35, he was written off, and he answered with 158 strikes landed on Diego Lopes for the vacant title and, in January, a 49-46, 49-46, 50-45 over Lopes again on a shoulder that, by his coach's account, had put the fight in doubt a month out. Six successful defences across two reigns; a seventh equals Jose Aldo's UFC record in the division. He has said that a night of heavy damage ends his career, and that this one will not go five rounds.
Evloev is 32, from Ingushetia, a Greco-Roman wrestler by trade, and the most unusual challenger the division has produced: twenty wins, ten of them in the UFC, every one of the ten a decision. Seven of his first ten fights were finishes, in M-1; none since. He has never knocked anybody down in the Octagon and never been knocked down himself. What he does is take people down β nearly five times every fifteen minutes, with the fight in his control more than a third of the time β and the names on the list are the point: Dan Ige, Lopes, Arnold Allen, Aljamain Sterling, and in March in London nine takedowns of ten on Lerone Murphy for a majority decision that made this fight. The road here was longer than the record: a booked fight with Topuria lost to a COVID test in 2022, a withdrawal from this arena in July last year, fifteen months idle before London.
Now the number that decides it. Those nine takedowns on Murphy bought Evloev three minutes and 54 seconds of control β about 26 seconds each β and Murphy out-landed him over the twenty-five minutes, 89 to 86. Evloev gets people down; against Murphy, and Arnold Allen before him, he kept them down for seconds, not minutes, while Lopes and Sterling he held for minutes at a time. Volkanovski will be taken down. Lopes managed two of five in January and Makhachev four of nine in Perth, and in that Perth fight Volkanovski gave up four takedowns, controlled Makhachev for nearly three minutes anyway and dropped him. The question for the judges is whether twenty-five seconds on the floor outweighs the two minutes of volume around it, because Volkanovski lands six significant strikes a minute at 57% and out-lands his opponents nearly two to one.
Evloev's own takedown defence is the hidden number: Sterling took him down six times of eight. Volkanovski wrestled Yair Rodriguez to the floor seven times and held him for more than seven minutes before stopping him; if the champion wrestles the wrestler in spots, the rounds get murkier for the challenger, not clearer. Then there is pace. Volkanovski has five hours of charted Octagon time and eleven five-round title fights; Evloev has half that and one five-rounder in the Octagon, and his output is falling: three and a half significant strikes a minute over his last five fights against nearly four for his career. If the takedowns stop landing in round three, there is no second plan the numbers can see.
The case for Evloev is simple and may be right: he is the bigger man at the weight, he cuts 26 lb to get here by his own account, he lands his takedowns on everybody, and three cards that reward them give him the belt without a mark on him. The case against a knockout, either way, is the stronger case on the night: Volkanovski has not stopped anyone since 2023 and Evloev has never dropped anyone, so the finish the champion keeps promising is the least likely of the four outcomes.
We make Volkanovski about a 55% winner in a fight the books call even: two cards 48-47 is the shape of it, and if there is a version of this where he loses, it is a 3-2 on takedown-weighted cards, not a 38-year-old's chin.
PickVolkanovski, decision55%
The verdict
Eleven favourites, one underdog, and two coin flips, one we call for the champion and one for the puncher. That is the shape of the night: a card the books have mostly read correctly, with the disagreements sitting under a couple of prices that look a step too short rather than over any favourite we doubt. Both belts stay where they are, on the scorecards.
Malkoun over Vagaev is the one underdog we have sided with, because a welterweight moving up with no volume is being asked to out-wrestle a middleweight black belt in his own weight class. Chopurov is the price we like least on the card without quite backing against it: a debutant at odds-on with no UFC tape is a bet on the highlight reel being honest. Yan we make a smaller favourite than the books do, and the whole of the discount is a nine-hour back operation nine months ago; if Dvalishvili is landing takedowns in the first round, the belt is coming back to Georgia. Temirov, Volkov and Pico are leans, not convictions, and we would not argue with anyone who flipped all three.
The upset that would matter most is Evloev, because a 21-0 champion with no finish in the UFC rewrites the featherweight calendar and makes every challenger a wrestling question first. The one that would feel biggest is Reyes, who has been written off more times than any man on this card and keeps turning up anyway. The one we would least like to explain is Krylov, who has beaten better men than Yakhyaev and been stopped by worse.
And before any of it, Friday's scale. Evloev cuts 26 lb, by his own account, to a title limit with no allowance, Keita has missed weight once in the UFC already, Santos has missed it once and skipped a weigh-in once, and Oki is cutting to featherweight for the first time in his UFC run. Three fights on this card are a pound away from being different fights.
Published