UFC 332 Predictions: Silva vs Wang And Every Fight On The Card
Valentina Shevchenko's injury has done what nobody at 125 lb has managed in years: taken the belt off her. The two-time champion has not fought since November 2025 and has told the UFC she cannot compete for at least a year, so the women's flyweight title is up for grabs, and on Saturday Natalia Silva and Wang Cong fight for it at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
It is a card of firsts. The first women's fight to headline a numbered event since Amanda Nunes beat Irene Aldana at UFC 289 in 2023. The first full UFC main card on CBS under the Paramount deal. And, for both headliners, a first UFC main event — five rounds, at 1,300 metres of altitude, with a world title on the line.
Fourteen fights, starting at 4pm ET with the early prelims and reaching the main card at 8pm ET, which is 1am on Sunday in the UK and Ireland. We've gone through every one of them in running order, with a pick, a confidence figure and a note on where our eyes and the odds disagree.
Every record, height, reach and age in the tapes below is read live from our own ledger, beside the best price we hold on each bout, and every fight we hold links straight to that bout on its card. The words stand as written on the day at the foot of this page; the tapes keep moving with the card. Bottom of the card first.
13Court McGee vs Eric Nolan
Welterweight · EARLY PRELIMS
22-15-0RECORD9-5-05′11″HEIGHT6′0″75″REACH73″41AGE29NOLAN WINS · KO/TKO · R3 3:26
The night starts with a goodbye.
McGee is 41, a Utah native, the winner of The Ultimate Fighter 11 back in 2010, and a 24-fight UFC veteran who has said this is the last one. The promotion has given him a home crowd to do it in front of. He was never spectacular — a pressure fighter with a bottomless tank — but he has been the picture of professionalism for sixteen years, and the Delta Center will be loud for him.
Nolan is 0-2 in the UFC, and the first defeat carries an asterisk: he took Baysangur Susurkaev up a division on short notice. The second doesn't — Farman Hasanov took him down 17 times and swept the cards. He is younger, fresher and the clear favourite, and the maths says he wins a decision. A farewell fight at home does something to a veteran, though, and the Utah native at least won't be surprised by the thin air.
PickNolan, decision65%
12Jacobe Smith vs Bruce Whitehead
Welterweight · EARLY PRELIMS
13-0-0RECORD8-3-05′10″HEIGHT5′10″72″REACH73″30AGE29SMITH WINS · KO/TKO · R1 1:32
The mismatch of the night, through nobody’s fault.
Smith is 12-0, 3-0 in the UFC with three finishes, and has turned two of his three Octagon appearances into wrestling and ground-and-pound; the other, his debut, ended with one left hook in 73 seconds. This is the second time this year he has been handed a short-notice opponent. Whitehead is 8-2 with five finishes, won a Fury FC fight in 48 seconds less than a fortnight before this card, and answered the phone. Good on him. It doesn't change the shape of it.
PickSmith, TKO round one85%
11Marvin Vettori vs Ismail Naurdiev
Middleweight · EARLY PRELIMS
19-11-1RECORD26-8-06′0″HEIGHT5′10″74″REACH74″33AGE30NAURDIEV WINS · DECISION - UNANIMOUS · R3 5:00
Four straight defeats, and not one of them by stoppage.
Vettori has lost to Jared Cannonier, Roman Dolidze, Brendan Allen and, last December, Brunno Ferreira — the last a 29-28 sweep for a man who missed weight by three pounds. He has not won since March 2023. He has also never been finished in thirty professional fights, and he broke his nose in the first round against Allen and still turned it into a Fight of the Night.
Naurdiev is the more dangerous striker: 13 knockouts, a 1:26 KO of Ryan Loder in Qatar last November, and across his UFC career he absorbs fewer than two significant strikes a minute. He is 2-1 since coming back to the UFC as a middleweight. This fight was meant to happen in Baku in June, until Vettori pulled out injured. Since then Vettori has left American Top Team for California, where the 2019-2021 version of him was built.
The pick is the durable man over the dangerous one. Three of the four losses on Vettori's slide were authored by ranked fighters; Naurdiev is not one, and fifteen minutes of pressure and clinch work is the fight he has been outworked in before. That the odds have Vettori as the underdog says more about the streak than the fighter.
PickVettori, decision55%
10Rafael Dos Anjos vs Alexander Hernandez
Lightweight · EARLY PRELIMS
32-18-0RECORD19-9-05′8″HEIGHT5′9″70″REACH72″41AGE34HERNANDEZ WINS · KO/TKO · R2 3:12
A former world champion, a fiftieth fight, and no good reason to expect a fairy tale.
Dos Anjos turns 42 at the end of October. He hasn't fought in nearly two years, he has lost three in a row, and he hasn't won at lightweight since Paul Felder in November 2020. This is a return to the division he ruled in 2015, and to a weight cut that is a decade harder on him than it was then.
Hernandez saw a four-fight winning streak end in April, but the stoppages of Diego Ferreira and Chase Hooper inside that run are the version of “El Gran Chango” that matters here: fast hands, a heavy right, and a willingness to go early. Dos Anjos' route is the one he has always had — pressure, clinch, wear a man down over fifteen minutes — and it needs a body that hasn't been in a cage since 2024.
PickHernandez, decision70%
9Johnny Walker vs Mick Parkin
Heavyweight · EARLY PRELIMS
23-10-0RECORD10-2-06′6″HEIGHT6′4″82″REACH79″34AGE31WALKER WINS · KO/TKO · R1 3:35
Walker has run out of light heavyweight, so he’s trying the division above.
Sixteen UFC fights at 205 lb, one win in five since he outpointed Anthony Smith in May 2023 — a TKO of Zhang Mingyang in Shanghai — and a split-decision loss to Dominick Reyes in April. Aleksandar Rakic, another light heavyweight, has since moved up and shut out Marcin Tybura, the only man ever to beat Parkin. Follow that precedent and the fight looks winnable for Walker. Follow his chin, which Magomed Ankalaev and Volkan Oezdemir both cracked in 2024, and it doesn't.
Parkin is 10-1, a Tom Aspinall training partner, and has been out for eighteen months since Tybura outpointed him — long enough to slip out of the top 15. He is the heavier, steadier, more sensible fighter and, for the first five minutes, the more vulnerable one. Walker is 34, finished with the cut to 205, and the speed of a light heavyweight against a heavyweight is real for as long as his lungs hold. If it gets out of the first round, Parkin's takedowns and cardio grind out the dullest decision on the card.
PickWalker, KO round one55%
8Anthony Wint vs Lucas Armand
Heavyweight · PRELIMS
9-0-0RECORD6-1-05′11″HEIGHT6′2″78″REACH78″31AGE30WINT WINS · KO/TKO · R1 0:23
Two unbeaten heavyweights, fourteen fights between them, and one of them goes home with a first loss.
Wint is 8-0, a former American footballer who won his contract in the opening week of this year's Contender Series and then submitted Terrance Chatman inside a round in Sacramento. Armand is 6-0, has finished his last five, including UFC veteran Braxton Smith, and is making his debut. Debuts at heavyweight are a coin flip with a heavier coin.
The lean is Wint, because he has already done it once in this cage and because his submission game is the thing heavyweight newcomers least often see coming. It is a lean, not a conviction — and a good deal less of one than the odds, which make Wint a heavy favourite.
PickWint, submission round one60%
7Damian Pinas vs Andrey Pulyaev
Middleweight · PRELIMS
11-1-0RECORD10-6-06′1″HEIGHT6′4″79.5″REACH78″24AGE29PINAS WINS · KO/TKO · R1 1:15
Ten wins, ten finishes.
Pinas is 24, from Suriname via Aruba, 10-1 with a 100% finishing rate and back-to-back stoppages of Wes Schultz and Cesar Almeida that the UFC has taken to calling “death touch” finishes. He is next in the line of Contender Series middleweights the promotion is trying to grow into another Gautier. Pulyaev is the man who gave Gautier fifteen hard minutes in January — and was then stopped by Nursulton Ruziboev in June, which is the more recent and the more relevant data point. A third straight loss would probably end his run.
PickPinas, KO inside two rounds80%
6Imanol Rodriguez vs Alden Coria
Flyweight · PRELIMS
8-0-0RECORD13-4-05′4″HEIGHT5′8″64.5″REACH67″26AGE28RODRIGUEZ WINS · KO/TKO · R1 3:11
A coin flip, whatever the odds say.
Rodriguez reached the semi-finals of TUF 33, lost a split decision to the eventual winner Joseph Morales, earned his contract on Contender Series, and then produced a turnaround finish of Kevin Borjas at UFC Mexico — in trouble before he found the stoppage. Coria doesn't do drama: a short-notice stoppage of Alessandro Costa at Noche UFC in September 2025, then two decision wins this year, 3-0 in the UFC and unbeaten in seven.
One man has the higher ceiling and has never lost as a professional; the other hasn't lost since January 2024. Favourites who need comebacks worry us; the man who doesn't need them gets the nod.
PickCoria, decision52%
5Ateba Gautier vs Roman Kopylov
Middleweight · MAIN CARD
11-2-0RECORD16-5-06′4″HEIGHT6′0″81″REACH75″24AGE34KOPYLOV WINS · KO/TKO · R1 3:12
The main card opens with the fight the UFC wants to see and is slightly afraid of.
Gautier is 24, Cameroonian, 11-1, and 5-0 in the UFC with four stoppages — a run that began with a first-round knockout of Jose Daniel Medina in March 2025 and most recently needed seventy seconds of the second round against Ozzy Diaz at UFC 328. Everything about him says future contender: the frame, the power, the ten-fight winning streak. Everything about the Pulyaev fight in January says not yet. That one went fifteen minutes and was closer than it had any right to be, and Pulyaev is a heavy underdog two fights below this one.
Kopylov is the test the matchmakers have been saving. He is 34, 15-5, six feet tall with a 75-inch reach, won four straight by knockout between 2022 and 2023, flattened Chris Curtis with a head kick with one second left in the fight, and beat Marco Tulio on the scorecards in May after back-to-back losses to Paulo Costa and Gregory Rodrigues. He is the definition of the ecosystem veteran — too good for newcomers, not quite good enough for the rankings — and he has one habit that matters here: he starts slowly. The verdict on the Costa loss was that he never got out of first gear, and Anthony Hernandez submitted him in the second round at UFC 298.
A fast starter with Gautier's power is the worst kind of opponent for a slow starter. If it's over inside eight minutes, it's Gautier. If it reaches the third, Kopylov's body kicks and his timing against a tiring man win it, and nobody should be surprised. Gautier is a clear favourite, which feels a touch generous for a prospect facing his first real veteran, and the late-rounds scenario is more plausible than that suggests.
PickGautier, KO inside two rounds60%
4Roberto Soldic vs Khaos Williams
Welterweight · MAIN CARD
22-4-0RECORD16-6-05′10″HEIGHT6′0″73″REACH77″31AGE32SOLDIC WINS · DECISION - UNANIMOUS · R3 5:00
One of the most-wanted free agents of 2022 arrives four years late.
Soldic held the KSW welterweight and middleweight titles, is 21-4 with 18 knockouts and one no contest, and owns a knockout of Dricus du Plessis in a series they split. When he hit free agency the UFC wanted him and he chose ONE Championship instead, where he fought three times in almost four years, went 1-1 with a no contest, and — by his own description — went semi-retired. His last MMA fight was a first-round knockout of Saygid Guseyn Arslanaliev in February 2025, more than nineteen months ago; his only fight since was a boxing match, a second-round knockout of the 48-year-old Tomasz Adamek in September 2025.
Williams is the opposite of a mystery. He is 32, 16-5, 7-4 in the UFC since 2020, six feet tall with a 77-inch reach, and built almost entirely out of forward pressure and right hands. He stopped Nikolay Veretennikov inside a round in May and has never once been boring. His losses have tended to come on scorecards, against men who could out-think him, not out-hit him.
Add it up: a debut, a nineteen-month layoff from MMA, a cut back to 170 lb from ONE's heavier limit, a reach deficit, and altitude. That is a lot of asterisks on a man expected to win three times in four. Soldic's power is still the best on this card, so the pick stays with him. But this is the fight most likely to be over inside ninety seconds either way, and Williams is a far livelier underdog than the odds allow. Whoever lands the first clean right hand wins.
PickSoldic, KO inside two rounds58%
3Esteban Ribovics vs King Green
Lightweight · MAIN CARD
17-3-0RECORD36-18-15′10″HEIGHT5′10″69″REACH71″30AGE40RIBOVICS WINS · KO/TKO · R1 4:08
The oddsmakers are pricing a birthday.
Green turned 40 three weeks ago. He has also won four in a row — a decision over Lance Gibson Jr. last December, then finishes of Daniel Zellhuber, Jeremy Stephens at UFC 328 and Terrance McKinney at UFC 329, the last a first-round stoppage in July that started with a body shot. It matches the best run of a UFC career that stretches back to 2013 and thirty-one fights — he won his first four, too — and it is the first time in that career he has finished three men in a row, at an age when most lightweights are on the commentary desk.
Ribovics is 30, from Tartagal in Argentina's Salta province, 16-3, with a 2024 Fight of the Year against Zellhuber on the CV and a second-round stoppage of Edson Barboza in August as his most recent work. Between those two he lost a split decision to Nasrat Haqparast, outpointed Elves Brener and was submitted by Mateusz Gamrot, which tells you what his floor looks like against a wrestler. Green is not one, though he has taken three of the four men in his streak down. This is the pre-event favourite for Fight of the Night and it is easy to see why: two men who like to stand in the pocket and trade.
Here is what the numbers say about that trade. Ribovics lands 7.41 significant strikes a minute — only five active UFC fighters with five or more fights land more — but at 44%, and he absorbs 5.72 a minute with 54% defence. Green lands 6.59 at 54% and stops 62% of what comes back. One man throws more; the other lands cleaner and gets hit less. Hands-low counters and body work against a fighter who walks forward eating shots is a matchup Green has been winning for a decade.
The caveat is the one everyone has seen. Jalin Turner and Mauricio Ruffy both knocked Green out in the last three years, and Ribovics hits hard enough to make it three. Fifteen minutes at altitude are no gift to a 40-year-old either. Call it a coin flip, in a fight the odds insist is anything but.
PickGreen, decision50%
2Payton Talbott vs Deiveson Figueiredo
Bantamweight · MAIN CARD
12-1-0RECORD25-8-15′10″HEIGHT5′5″70.5″REACH68″28AGE38TALBOTT WINS · KO/TKO · R1 2:09
Figueiredo used to be the most frightening 125-pounder alive. Now he is a heavy underdog, and deservedly so.
He is 38, 25-7-1, and 1-4 in his last five. The one win was a split decision. The losses were Petr Yan, Cory Sandhagen, Umar Nurmagomedov and, in May in Macau, Song Yadong, who let him land nine significant strikes in 9:42, stuffed three takedowns and guillotined him when the fourth landed. That is the fight to watch back. It is not that Figueiredo has stopped being dangerous; it is that he has stopped being able to make anyone stand in front of the danger. A man who was once the most violent flyweight in the world has averaged fewer than 20 significant strikes a fight over his last five.
Talbott, 28, out of Reno, is 11-1 and built exactly the way you would build someone to beat that version of Figueiredo: five foot ten with a 70.5-inch reach against a five-foot-five opponent, a switch stance, long uppercuts, and a habit of pointing at the centre of the cage and inviting people into it. Raoni Barcelos took him down eight times in January 2025 and it looked like a career-defining hole. Eleven months later he stuffed six of Henry Cejudo's seven takedown attempts, landed three of his own, dropped him, out-landed an Olympic champion 134 to 60 and swept the cards 30-27. The hole is patched. Cejudo, who had billed it as his last MMA fight, retired in the cage.
The case for the upset is a single sentence: Figueiredo still hits like a middleweight and Talbott stands in front of people. Cejudo got on top of Talbott and took his back for two minutes of the second round; a sharper grappler might have done more with it. If the overhand right lands in the first two minutes, or Talbott gets lazy on an entry and offers up his neck, the old Figueiredo gets one more night. That path exists. It is also the only one, and it closes fast: the other half of his threat, the takedown, comes half as often after round one these days.
Figueiredo has been stopped four times in 33 fights, but two were chokes and two were injury stoppages, so the base case is a beating on the scorecards rather than a knockout. We make Talbott about an 82% winner, a shade below where the bookmakers have him.
PickTalbott, unanimous decision82%
1Natalia Silva vs Wang Cong
MAIN EVENT · Women's Flyweight · TITLE
21-5-1RECORD10-2-05′4″HEIGHT5′6″65″REACH65.5″29AGE34SILVA WINS · DECISION - UNANIMOUS · R5 5:00
Silva wins. It will be closer than the bookmakers think.
Start with the résumés, because they are not equivalent. Silva is 29, 20-5-1, 8-0 in the UFC and on a fourteen-fight winning streak, and her last three wins are Jessica Andrade, Alexa Grasso and Rose Namajunas — three former champions in a row. Wang is 34, 10-1, and her four-fight streak is Bruna Brasil, Ariane da Silva, who came in six pounds heavy, Eduarda Moura at a 127.5 lb catchweight after both women missed the flyweight limit, and Tracy Cortez. Good wins. Not the same wins.
The Cortez fight in July is where the hype came from, and it deserves a closer look. Wang landed 137 of 215 significant strikes at 64% — Cortez managed 72 of 156 — and swept the cards 29-27 despite having a point taken for an illegal knee. She is, statistically, the most accurate striker the division has ever had, and she owns its best striking differential. But Cortez landed one of nine takedown attempts and never committed to any of them. Wang got the fight she wanted for fifteen minutes.
Moura committed, and the picture changed: three takedowns and 8:06 of control time in a fifteen-minute fight. Wang won it by dropping Moura in the first round and outlasting her in the third, when Moura, spent from trying to hold her down, went 0 for 6 on takedowns. Her one defeat is a second-round submission to Gabriella Fernandes in 2024. Silva is not a wrestler — she went one for two against Namajunas — but she has timing: the takedown she landed with thirty seconds left sealed a third round she was already winning, 28 significant strikes to 8. Over twenty-five minutes of close striking rounds, Silva has two ways to win a round. Wang, three takedown attempts into her UFC career, mostly has one.
Then there is the scale. Wang came in at 127.5 lb in February — a pound and a half over the non-title limit, two and a half over 125 — eight months after making 125 on the dot against da Silva. A title fight carries no one-pound allowance; she has to make 125.0 exactly, at 34, and then fight five rounds at 1,300 metres. Even a clean cut costs something. A bad one means that, by Friday lunchtime, only Silva can leave with the belt.
Now the honest case for Wang, which is better than her underdog status suggests. Silva's last fight was nearly a loss. She was slow for ten minutes against Namajunas, landed 51 of 133 at 38%, was put on her back in the second round, and 68% of fan scorecards and 72% of media scores had Rose winning before all three judges gave it to Silva 29-28. Her accuracy against fighters who move sits at 38 to 40%. Wang is the sharper boxer, and if Silva starts the way she started in January, Wang banks the first two rounds and makes her chase.
Wang has never been past three, though, and that is the fight. Silva has 26 professional bouts, finished the Namajunas fight as the fresher woman, and turns the volume up when she is behind. Wang has eleven MMA fights, took up the sport late, and has never needed a fourth round. Rounds one and two are a coin flip. Four and five belong to the pace, the kicks and the opportunistic takedowns.
Wang also has the more famous name on her record: a 2015 kickboxing win over Shevchenko. It has no bearing on Saturday. It is the reason people will be watching.
We make Silva about a 63% winner, a little below where the bookmakers have her. If there is a mistake to be made on this fight, it is expecting a finish.
PickSilva, decision, 48-47 or 49-4663%
The verdict
Four of five main-card favourites win, Green spoils the fifth, and the belt goes to Brazil on the scorecards. That is the shape of the night: a card the bookmakers have mostly read correctly, with the interesting disagreements on the main card sitting under three underdogs rather than over any favourite.
Green is the disagreement we hold most firmly. The odds are a tax on his age, not on his form, and his defensive numbers are better than the favourite's. Williams and Kopylov are both livelier than the odds allow, against favourites whose specific weaknesses — nineteen months out of MMA, fifteen hard minutes against Pulyaev — map straight onto what the underdog does well. Silva and Talbott are favourites for good reason, and the mistake with both is expecting a finish: scorecards in the two biggest fights of the night. On the undercard, Vettori and Coria are the two underdogs we have sided with, and Walker is the favourite most likely to lose if he cannot finish it inside a round.
The upset that would matter most is not Green. It is Wang, because a Chinese champion changes the division's calendar and turns a Shevchenko comeback into a far bigger event than anything Silva could headline. The upset that would matter least and feel biggest is McGee, because the building will be his.
And before any of it, Friday's weigh-in. If Wang misses, only Silva can leave Salt Lake City with the belt, and the main event becomes a fight with a title attached to one corner.
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