Last week, I told you UFC Vegas 121 looked like a shit show on paper.
Turns out I may have actually undersold it.
We got a ridiculous disqualification after Mahammadali Osmanli decided to launch a full-force knee into the head of a very clearly grounded opponent. We got some absolutely insane judging that once again reminded everyone why leaving your money in the hands of three people sitting cageside is one of the most terrifying experiences in sports. And then, just when you thought the night couldn’t get any weirder, we ended with Raoni Barcelos getting slammed into another dimension and lying motionless in the Octagon before eventually being stretchered out and taken to the hospital.
So yeah. The card looked like a shit show, and it lived up to the billing.
Thankfully, the UFC has decided to reward those of us who survived it.
UFC 332 is a significantly more interesting card. We have a vacant title on the line, some legitimate prospects getting real tests, aging veterans being thrown into spots that may tell us it’s time to call it a career, and enough violence sprinkled throughout the card to keep me interested.
Natalia Silva and Wang Cong headline for the vacant flyweight belt in a fight that’s getting shit on by plenty of people, but I actually like it. Silva has been treated like the heir apparent at 125 for years, Wang Cong is more dangerous than the casual fan probably realizes, and we’re finally going to find out whether the Natalia Silva hype train ends with UFC gold or gets derailed one stop before the station.
We’ve got 13 fights to get through.
Let’s get into it.
UFC 332 Preview: Silva vs. Wang
Natalia Silva vs. Wang Cong
The main event. A main event many are shitting on, but it’s a good fight for us MMA hardos.
What the hell was that performance we saw from Natalia Silva last time? I think there are only three people on this planet who believe Silva beat Rose that night, and fortunately for Silva and Silva bettors, they happened to be the three judges sitting Octagon-side.
Don’t just take my word for it. Silva lands 4.81 significant strikes per minute for her career. Through the first 10 minutes against Rose, she landed 23. Her career pace says that number should’ve been closer to 48. Rose spent over two minutes in control in the second round, and Silva didn’t really show up until the third, when she outlanded Rose 28 to 8. That’s a five-minute fighter in a 15-minute fight, and next time it’s a 25-minute fight.
That was really the first time we saw someone consistently try to bring the fight to Silva, and it was a bad look. One thing I can promise you is Wang Cong will not sit back and wait here. She’s a high-pressure kickboxer and a very good one at that.
The pedigree is real. Wang has wushu sanda gold from the World Championships and the Asian Games, a silver at the 2019 World Boxing Championships, and, fun fact, a kickboxing win over Valentina Shevchenko back in 2015. In the Octagon, she’s the most accurate striker in women’s flyweight history at 58%, lands 6.82 significant strikes per minute and owns the best striking differential in the division. Her first UFC win, a 1:02 knockout of Victoria Leonardo, is the second-fastest finish in division history.
Silva is on an insane win streak and has been hyped up as the future champion of the division for years now. It almost seemed like they were protecting her from Valentina for as long as humanly possible. The end of the road finally came, but now it’s Valentina who’s going to be sidelined for the next year-plus.
To be fair to Silva, the tools are elite when they’re turned on. She’s a taekwondo-based kicker with some of the best footwork in the division, she defends 66% of the strikes thrown at her and absorbs just 2.36 per minute. She’s beaten Jessica Andrade, Alexa Grasso and Rose Namajunas in a row. But she’s also gone to the judges five straight times, so she’s not getting rid of anyone early.
This fight comes down to one thing: Which version of Natalia Silva shows up?
If it’s the stuck-in-the-mud version we saw against Rose, Wang Cong is going to get her hand raised, plain and simple. If it’s the lightning-quick, offensively well-rounded fighter we watched rise to the top of the division, this is going to be a great fight that Silva should edge out.
Here’s the technical key for me: Silva’s whole game is built on movement, getting in and out on angles behind her kicks. Wang’s best weapon in her last fight was the calf kick. She chopped Tracy Cortez’s lead leg so badly that Cortez was off her feet in the first 90 seconds and her leg was compromised by the second round. If Wang can slow down Silva’s legs, she takes away the one thing that makes Silva so hard to hit.
And there are a couple of wild cards. Neither woman has ever gone past 15 minutes in the UFC, and they’re doing it for the first time at altitude in Salt Lake City. Wang is also five years older. Gas tanks are a legitimate unknown on both sides.
Because of the price, I’m going to lean toward the former. Without any strong conviction, I’ll say Wang Cong gets the win here. I think her forward pressure can overwhelm Silva, and I liked the improvements we saw in her defensive wrestling and grappling against a wrestler like Tracy Cortez in her last fight. Cortez got her down once, and Wang was back up almost immediately, fighting off a guillotine on the way. She’s stopping 86% of takedowns for her UFC career, and she still won 29-27 on all three cards despite getting docked a point for an illegal knee.
Prediction: Wang Cong by Decision
Deiveson Figueiredo vs. Payton Talbott
This is a setup fight for Talbott.
He was given his first real veteran test against Raoni Barcelos three fights back and failed miserably. That was the humbling he needed during his ascension to the top of the class.
Talbott went from being just a flashy striker to looking like a complete, well-rounded fighter. We saw that much-improved wrestling and grappling in his last fight against Henry Cejudo. And the striking didn’t go anywhere, either. He landed 134 of 217 significant strikes against Cejudo, a ridiculous 61%, and outlanded a former two-division champ by more than double.
Figgy, meanwhile, is just on a quick downward trajectory in his MMA career. He’s 1-4 in his last five. Song Yadong is awesome, but how the hell do you let him submit you? That was a quit job by Figgy.
So what have we seen from the 38-year-old this year? A significant weight miss and a quit tap. He came in 2.5 pounds heavy against Umar Nurmagomedov in January and lost 30-27 on every card. Then the guillotine against Song in May.
Need I say more?
The numbers say no. Talbott lands 6.62 significant strikes per minute. Figgy lands 2.57. The one real hole in Talbott’s game is his striking defense, but Figgy doesn’t throw enough anymore to make anyone pay for it. His only realistic path is the grappling, and Talbott is stopping 77% of takedowns.
The number on Talbott is justified, and I think he rolls.
Prediction: Payton Talbott by KO
King Green vs. Esteban Ribovics
Let’s pump the brakes here on King Green and read between the lines.
This is going to be the fifth fight in the last 10 months for the 40-year-old, and the 56th professional fight of his career. What’s he beaten?
Lance Gibson by decision? Okay.
Zellhuber? Shit.
Jeremy Stephens? Washed.
Terrance McKinney? Who was getting the best of who before the inevitable McKinney death gas kicked in?
Ribovics is a huge step up from what Green has been facing. He’s not light on experience like Gibson. He’s not Charmin-soft like Zellhuber. He doesn’t qualify for AARP benefits like Jeremy Stephens. And he’s not going to gas after three hard minutes like McKinney.
Ribovics is dangerous, has nasty kicks and owns a very good gas tank. He’s 5-2 in his last seven with three Fight of the Night bonuses, and he just ran through Edson Barboza for a second-round TKO. He’s also not going to give Green the Gamrot experience and wet blanket him for 15 minutes. He averages 0.32 takedowns per 15 minutes. He’s coming to strike.
That’s a problem stylistically for Green. He’s always been at his best as a counter-puncher: shoulder roll, pull counters, making guys miss and making them pay. Both of these guys are volume strikers, but Ribovics gets his volume from kicks to the body and legs at range, which is exactly how you neutralize a pocket counter-puncher.
You can’t pull-counter a body kick.
King Green, formerly Bobby, seems to have shifted his focus from fighter to entertainer. In a business where you’re locked in a cage, face-to-face with someone trying to rearrange that face and rip it off your neck, that’s probably not a good thing.
I think this is the end of the win streak for King Green, and I think Ribovics is very live for a finish.
Prediction: Esteban Ribovics by TKO
Roberto Soldić vs. Khaos Williams
Khaos Williams is a really trendy underdog pick this week.
I can understand the case being made against Soldić. He has 25 professional fights under his belt, and this is the first time we’re seeing him in the UFC. But let’s not forget the bed-shitter that is Khaos Williams.
He’s fun and he always puts on a show, but he’s unreliable.
Roberto Soldić owns a win over Dricus Du Plessis back in 2018 in KSW, which is by far the biggest win on either résumé in this fight. Du Plessis actually beat him first, and Soldić ran it back six months later and knocked him out in the third round to reclaim the KSW welterweight title. He later added the KSW middleweight belt by knocking out Mamed Khalidov.
It was a long time ago, and Soldić hasn’t exactly been the most active fighter in recent years. His ONE Championship run went no contest, knockout loss to Zebaztian Kadestam, then a 20-month layoff before a 1:55 one-punch knockout of Dagi Arslanaliev in February 2025. That’s one MMA win since 2021. But the talent has always been there. Eighteen of his 21 wins are by knockout.
This fight should be a barn burner, and I think we see an early finish. Both guys hunt the knockout, and Soldić’s chin has been cracked before.
Somebody is going to sleep.
Prediction: Under / Fight Doesn’t Go the Distance
Lean: Roberto Soldić by KO
Ateba Gautier vs. Roman Kopylov
This is a major, major step up in competition for Gautier.
Gautier looks like he was made in a lab. He has elite power, elite speed and is a freak athlete. He’s on a 10-fight win streak with nine career knockouts. I think those 15 minutes in the cage with Pulyaev may look gross on his résumé now, but they could end up being a blessing in disguise. He followed it up by dropping and finishing Ozzy Diaz in the second round at UFC 328.
Cage time is priceless.
We saw Gautier slow down in that fight, but it wasn’t a Robelis-level death gas. Kopylov is tough as nails. He won’t get put away easily, and he has a massive résumé and experience edge in this one. He’s 7-3 in his last 10 with five finishes.
But look at the defensive numbers. Kopylov absorbs 5.08 significant strikes per minute, which is more than he lands. Gautier absorbs 2.60. And Kopylov isn’t wrestling his way out of this one, either. Gautier is stopping 93% of takedowns.
Even with power like Gautier’s, I don’t see him putting Kopylov away early. Gautier is going to have to earn this win, and I think he will.
This feels like a good Gautier Round 3/Decision type of play. I just think he eventually overwhelms Kopylov with those physical tools.
Prediction: Ateba Gautier by Decision
Imanol Rodriguez vs. Alden Coria
This is a fun fight.
Imanol Rodriguez is backed by a ton of hype, and I think it’s warranted. There may not be a harder hitter in the flyweight division than Imanol Rodriguez. He’s fast, too, and very good with his top control and ground-and-pound. He lands 5.71 significant strikes per minute at 55%, and his average fight lasts under six minutes.
The negatives? He’s very small, which is to be expected at flyweight, and his striking defense is meh at best.
Kevin Borjas rocked and dropped him in that last fight, but Imanol reacted so well to it. He kept moving forward, took Borjas down, controlled him on the mat for the rest of the first round and then got the finish in the second. Over a third of the significant strikes he landed in that fight came in the clinch or on the ground. That’s where he does his real damage.
Coria looked like shit as a 10-1 favorite in his last fight against Stewart Nicoll. He won the decision, but he landed just 44 of 127 significant strikes on a guy he should’ve run through. When Stewart Nicoll can land cleanly on you and have big moments, what’s going to happen when you’re in there with a killer like Imanol Rodriguez?
The one thing that gives me pause: Coria’s path is grappling. He hits 54% of his takedowns and attempts 1.5 submissions per 15 minutes, and Imanol has had trouble keeping fights standing in his small UFC sample. If Coria gets him down early and keeps him there, this gets interesting.
I really like Rodriguez in this spot. I think he’s legit, and I think he’s going to be a big problem in the flyweight division.
Prediction: Imanol Rodriguez
Damian Pinas vs. Andrey Pulyaev
I’ll admit it. I took the bait a little bit last time with Pulyaev after he survived 15 minutes in the cage with Ateba Gautier.
What a mistake that was.
Pulyaev is just low-level for the UFC. Now he gets another guy cut from the same cloth as Gautier in Damian Pinas.
Pinas is a brick shithouse. He’s powerful, explosive and electric. He lands 6.33 significant strikes per minute at 63%, and every one of his 10 wins has come by finish. And for Pinas, this fight may actually be a step down in competition from his last one.
The only real unknown with Pinas is how he’ll handle things if he can’t get the quick finish. But Pulyaev’s survival plan against Gautier, circling away from his bread-and-butter shot, isn’t going to work the same way against Pinas. He’s a lot more dynamic and polished as a fighter than Gautier was at the time he fought Pulyaev.
I don’t think Pulyaev survives what’s coming at him Saturday night.
I think it’s over quick, too.
Prediction: Damian Pinas by Round 1 KO
Anthony Wint vs. Lucas Armand
Anthony Wint is being served another cupcake.
He’s making up for lost time in his MMA career, and the promotion has to love how active he wants to be. He came off Contender Series Week 1 and submitted Terrance Chatman in the first round of his UFC debut.
Wint is fun. He’s part of that new heavyweight prototype, like Josh Hokit, where they’re not the biggest or heaviest guys in the division, but they make up for what they lack in size with pure athleticism. The former football player’s athleticism shows up most in his level changes and scrambles.
Armand is unbeaten and has finished his last five, including UFC vet Braxton Smith. But that’s a regional résumé, and this is the first time he’s seeing someone with Wint’s speed.
I think Anthony Wint’s day will eventually come where he gets nuked and exposed.
Saturday is not that day.
Prediction: Anthony Wint by Round 1 Finish
Johnny Walker vs. Mick Parkin
You’ve got big, slow and boring against athletic, low-volume and chinny for this one.
Johnny Walker, the latter, tries his hand at heavyweight.
Normally, when you have a chinny light heavyweight moving up to heavyweight, it’s an auto-fade. Fortunately for Walker, Parkin isn’t exactly known for the thud in his fists. He’s a wrestler who wants to win minutes with control.
I thought Parkin got hosed in his last fight against Tybura, which would’ve been a decent win on his résumé. The significant strikes were basically dead even, and Parkin landed 102 total strikes to Tybura’s 64.
This fight may very well be a snoozefest.
The time between Johnny Walker sequences can be measured with a sundial, and Parkin wants to slow things down and control his way to victory.
Will the move up in weight take away Walker’s greatest asset, his athleticism? I don’t know. Walker defends 57% of takedowns for his career, and that number was built against light heavyweights.
I just can’t trust Johnny Walker, whose best win against Zhang Mingyang is aging like milk.
I think we see a snoozer.
Prediction: Fight Goes the Distance
Lean: Mick Parkin
Rafael dos Anjos vs. Alexander Hernandez
Wait… RDA isn’t retired?
I was shocked when I saw his name on a UFC card when they announced the full card. After some digging and stalking, I found out why we haven’t seen RDA in so long.
I knew about the gruesome knee injury. That was the Geoff Neal fight, where his leg gave out in the first round. What I didn’t know about were the second and third surgeries that followed, both corrective surgeries after something went wrong with the previous one.
This is the 50th pro fight of his career. He’s on a three-fight skid, hasn’t fought in nearly two years, and hasn’t won at lightweight since beating Paul Felder in November 2020.
If Hernandez can come out and lead the dance rather than waiting for things to come to him, he’s going to win this fight, and I think he wins it pretty easily. Pressure is the right game plan against a 41-year-old southpaw coming off a reconstructed knee. Make him plant, pivot and move backward on it.
He got dominated by Rafa Garcia, but Garcia has looked more than competent since the resurgence of Bloodline MMA. And don’t forget what Hernandez looks like when he’s rolling: knockouts of Diego Ferreira and Chase Hooper during a four-fight win streak.
I also can’t help but think this may very well be the retirement fight for RDA. It’s been a great run for the former champ, but coming up on his 42nd birthday and after everything that knee has been through since we last saw him, the pick has gotta be Alex Hernandez.
Prediction: Alex Hernandez by KO
Marvin Vettori vs. Ismail Naurdiev
Oh Marvin…
Marvin is notorious for his granite chin, but he’s just become so low-volume and so slow that it makes him impossible to back with any confidence. He’s on a four-fight skid and went back to Kings MMA to try to fix it.
Ismail Naurdiev is a solid fighter. He’s 2-1 in his second UFC run, and the one loss came with a two-point deduction for a knee to a downed Jun Yong Park. He followed it up with a 1:26 knockout of Ryan Loder in November.
He’s a good striker who doesn’t sit back and let the fight come to him, which isn’t ideal for a guy who will sit back and take abuse like Vettori. Vettori absorbs 4.55 significant strikes per minute. Naurdiev absorbs 1.75. His grappling can also stand up to what Marvin brings in that department.
I’m not really sure what there is to like about Marvin anymore besides the chin, and even that has taken a lot of wear and tear.
Backing someone because he has a great chin is like backing someone because he’s “tough.” All it really means is we’ve seen that chin get checked and nuked too many times.
Marvin is a trendy dog pick this week, but I’m not buying it.
Prediction: Ismail Naurdiev by Decision
Jacobe Smith vs. Bruce Whitehead
Jacobe Smith is a killer.
Nobody wants to fight this guy, and for good reason. Props to Bruce Whitehead for stepping in, but it’s going to be a rough night for him. He won a fight on the regional scene just over a week ago, and now he’s walking into the cage with an unbeaten wrestler on no camp.
Prediction: Jacobe Smith by KO
Court McGee vs. Eric Nolan
Court McGee retirement fight.
It’s time.
The TUF 11 winner is wrapping up a 24-fight UFC career at home in Utah.
He’s looked finished for quite a while and hasn’t been the same since his neck injury and since we started to see his durability go.
Eric Nolan hasn’t gotten off to the best start in the UFC. He’s 0-2, but it looks like he’s being given a gift here.
Nolan stepped in on short notice last year to fight Susurkaev, who came into the UFC off a Contender Series win earlier that week, and he did it up a weight class. He also saved a fight on the card in Azerbaijan earlier this summer against Farman Hasanov.
Just a few days before that fight, Nolan was posting on his Instagram story looking for cornermen who could get visas and travel with him to Azerbaijan.
The guy had never even left the country before.
So you’re asking him to travel all the way to Azerbaijan, cut weight and fight a local prospect who appears to have some ability? That’s a lot to ask.
Fair warning, the UFC numbers don’t love Nolan. He’s landing 1.68 significant strikes per minute while absorbing 2.59. But two fights on short notice against those two guys is a tiny, ugly sample, and a full camp against a 41-year-old with fading durability is a completely different assignment.
The UFC owes Nolan one.
Here it is.
I think it’s all Nolan here.
Prediction: Eric Nolan
Final Thoughts
There are weeks where I finish writing one of these and feel like I have the UFC completely figured out.
This is not one of those weeks.
There are some spots I absolutely love, a few where I’m willingly stepping in front of the public train, and at least one where I fully expect to look back Saturday night and wonder what the fuck I was thinking.
That’s MMA.
You can watch every second of tape, dig through every stat imaginable and convince yourself you found the perfect angle. Then some guy gets kicked in the dick twice, loses a point, gets dropped with 12 seconds left and somehow wins 30-27 on somebody’s scorecard.
The goal isn’t to be right about everything. Nobody is. It’s finding the spots where the tape, matchup and number all tell the same story, then living with whatever kind of nonsense happens once they lock the cage.
Last week gave us enough nonsense to last a month.
Hopefully the MMA gods got it all out of their system.
See you Saturday.
