The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to Utah for UFC 332, a solid enough card badly in need of a main event. The headliner, which sees Natalia Silva take on Cong Wang for the freshly vacant women's flyweight title, is stretched thin as a main event, but the rest of the main card makes a lot of sense.
Top bantamweight prospect Payton Talbott gets his next test against former flyweight champ Deiveson Figueiredo, and the rest of this slate is matched for action. King Green and Esteban Ribovics should have a barnburner, knockout artist Roberto Soldic finally makes his UFC debut, and dynamic middleweight Ateba Abega Gautier looks for his biggest win yet against Roman Kopylov.
Main Event: Natalia Silva vs. Cong Wang
Odds: Silva (-205), Wang (+170)
This fight is stretched thin in almost every promotional aspect, as it does not feel much like a headliner or title fight and might not even be all that exciting, but it is at least an intellectually interesting fight that should tell us something about whoever winds up as the UFC's new flyweight champion.
Natalia Silva's UFC debut in 2022 was a bit of an afterthought, especially coming off a two-and-a-half-year layoff, but once she hit the Octagon, it was quickly apparent that she would be a problem for most of the division. Silva has a case as one of the fastest fighters in the UFC relative to her division, which has made up for some bad process. She generally leaves a lot of defensive openings that could be taken advantage of, provided someone can actually catch up to her level of speed.
Silva finally clinched her title shot with a January win over Rose Namajunas, but that fight might have hurt her stock in the process. The result was a tepid affair in which Silva looked reticent to lead against someone who could control range and cause some damage.
Cong Wang, meanwhile, is an obvious talent with a built-in backstory for a Shevchenko fight if she wins the belt. The UFC picked Wang up in 2024, and she immediately looked like a natural who figured to be fast-tracked to a title fight. A matchup against Gabriella Fernandes was clearly going her way until she got stunned with a counter and choked out on the mat, handing her her first mixed martial arts defeat in a massive upset.
But she has thankfully learned from the loss in terms of actually respecting what her opponents have to offer. Even if she is being rushed a bit into this title fight, Wang has looked every bit of a contender in her two 2026 performances.
The Stakes
With the UFC matching Wang against wrestlers in her last few fights, it is hard to know exactly how she will take on the challenge of Silva's speedy striking, though the leg kicks she used to chop down Cortez should be quite an effective weapon. There is also the curiosity around this being each woman's first five-round fight.
It would not necessarily be a shock if Silva coasts to a win here through her speed or experience advantages, but Wang seems worth the flier. She figures to be steady for five rounds and understands range well enough that she could frustrate Silva much like Namajunas did.
