Unbeaten Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev stops Nikita Krylov in the first round at UFC 333

Abdul-Rakhman Yakhyaev stopped Nikita Krylov in the first round of their light heavyweight bout on the UFC 333 preliminary card Saturday in Abu Dhabi, improving to 11-0 as a professional and handing one of the division's longest-tenured fighters a third loss in his last four outings, according to the official UFC 333 results.

Yakhyaev finished Krylov with a knee followed by punches at 2:38 of the opening round. Born in Tsotsi-Yurt, Chechnya, the 25-year-old now trains out of MMA Nurnberg in Germany. The win was his third inside the UFC since debuting there in November 2025, and his fourth straight stoppage overall, with three of those four finishes coming in the first round, according to his fight history on Wikipedia.

Krylov, a 33-year-old fighter who has competed in the UFC since 2013 with one break, falls to 31-13. Nicknamed The Miner for his hometown of Donetsk, he has now lost three of his last four fights in the promotion: a first-round knockout to Bogdan Guskov last July, a third-round knockout win over Modestas Bukauskas in January, and a third-round TKO loss to Robert Whittaker in July of this year, before Saturday's stoppage, per Wikipedia's record of his career.

The bout was part of a four-fight preliminary card that also included a first-round TKO win for Dominick Reyes over Azamat Murzakanov, ahead of a main card topped by Alexander Volkanovski's featherweight title defense against Movsar Evloev and Petr Yan's bantamweight title defense against Merab Dvalishvili.