O'Malley warns Yan's nine-hour back surgery could cost him the bantamweight title

Sean O’Malley has raised serious doubts about Petr Yan’s readiness for Saturday’s bantamweight title trilogy bout with Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi, warning that Yan’s January lumbar surgery — a nine-hour procedure — may not have left him enough recovery time.

Yan defends his title against Dvalishvili in the co-main event, a rematch of their September 2024 meeting at UFC 323, where Yan dominated to claim the belt and avenge his 2023 non-title loss to the Georgian wrestler. The trilogy was originally expected sooner, but Yan’s back surgery pushed the date to this weekend — roughly nine months after going under the knife.

For O’Malley, that timeline is uncomfortably familiar. The former bantamweight champion had hip labrum surgery before his own 2025 rematch with Dvalishvili and fought approximately seven months post-operation — a decision he now calls his biggest career regret.

“I got labrum surgery, and I fought Merab seven months after, and that’s my biggest regret of my whole career,” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel. “I was not nearly where I needed to be, and he was extra confident. So this could not be good for Petr. Those surgeries take four months, five months to actually let your body heal.”

O’Malley acknowledged that the exact nature and scope of Yan’s lumbar procedure is unclear, making it difficult to pin down a precise recovery benchmark. But the parallel was enough to shift his prediction.

“It really changes my thought process on this fight,” he said. “I thought Petr was going to go in there and dominate, but that alone — him getting surgery that close — sounds bad.”

Despite the concern, O’Malley was emphatic that a fully healthy Yan represents one of the most dangerous fighters in the division. “Pete is no joke. He is one of the scariest guys in the UFC, 100 percent,” he said, adding that he is actively rooting for a Yan victory.

The reason is straightforward: O’Malley wants the rematch. He and Yan previously met at UFC 280 in Abu Dhabi in October 2022, with Yan winning by unanimous decision while defending his title. O’Malley believes a second fight between them would be the biggest bout in bantamweight history, and a Yan win on Saturday would put that matchup firmly on the table.