Things weren’t looking good for Petr Yan early on in his trilogy fight against Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 333. The first two rounds went heavily in Dvalishvili’s direction and it looked like “The Machine” might power to another dominant win like the first fight between the two. But then “No Mercy” woke up in the third round, started shucking off Dvalishvili’s takedowns and hitting the Georgian fighter with combos and body shots.

The end result: 48-47 scores from all three judges, making Yan the 2-1 winner of their three-fight series (watch the highlights here). Across those three fights, Dvalishvili shot takedowns on Yan 136 times, and Yan defended 118 of those 136. In rounds three, four, and five of their fight in Abu Dhabi, Yan defended all 39 takedown attempts.

During the UFC 333 post-fight press conference, Yan discussed the hard-fought win over Dvalishvili and his thoughts on their three fights.

“Yes, I’m very happy that this trilogy ended with me being on top,” he said through a translator. “This was very long hard story that made me work harder and made me really bring the best out of myself.”

Asked if he considered Dvalishvili the second-best bantamweight in the world, Yan demurred.

“I won’t call him the second or third best because every decade and every time has their own champs, their own heroes, their own best fighters,” he said. “And I think it’s not for me necessarily to say that. It’s more for you guys that are analyzing the sport, figuring out the sport. You are the ones that are giving people names.”

There’s been some animosity between Yan and Dvalishvili over the course of their fights, but the two showed respect for each other following Yan’s win at UFC 333. Words were exchanged, but Yan refused to go too deeply into what was said.

“We shook hands, said thank you to each other, congratulated on the great fight,” Yan said. “And then we kind of discussed a few political issues that are gonna stay there. But I’m sure you’ll hear it. There were microphones everywhere.”

“At some point, it’ll come out there, but I’d rather leave it between us for now until it gets published.”

Dvalishvili has spoken out in the past against Russia and the country’s aggression towards Georgia and other countries in the region. That’s led to some serious animosity between him and other Russian fighters like Umar Nurmagomedov which in turn has led to some hairy confrontations with random Russians out in the wild.

Did Yan and Dvalishvili bury the hatchet caused by national tensions? We’ll have to wait for the audio from inside the cage to leak in order to find out.