UFC 332 goes down this Saturday at Delta Center in Salt Lake City, headlined by a vacant women’s flyweight title fight between Natalia Silva and Wang Cong. Silva is on a 14-fight winning streak and was expecting to challenge divisional GOAT Valentina Shevchenko until the champion withdrew and vacated the title due to injury. Wang stepped in for the vacant title, with the UFC clearly planning that if she wins, they can squeeze some promotional juice out of Wang’s previous kickboxing victory over Shevchenko, à la Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira.
But who leaves Utah with the belt? Let’s take a look at the matchup.
Paths to Victory for Natalia Silva
Silva enters Saturday riding an eight-fight winning streak in the UFC and back-to-back decisions over former UFC champions, Rose Namajunas and Alexa Grasso. By any reasonable estimation, she’s the deserving No. 1 contender at 125 pounds, and while I would have confidently picked Shevchenko to beat her, many thought Silva could have given the champion trouble. Now, she’s facing a much better matchup, which is why Silva is the odds-on favorite to become the fourth woman to hold flyweight gold.
Silva’s game is a pretty basic style that harkens back to her taekwondo roots and revolves around her distance management. Right from the opening bell, Silva wants to keep fighters away from her until she chooses to engage. Silva constantly adjusts her feet and feints, causing hesitation from her opponents, letting her stay all the way out until she comes in with combinations, only to dart back out afterward. Based on the faces of her opponents while they’re fighting, it’s a very frustrating style to combat.
Underpinning all of this is good athleticism — not amazing, but above most of the division — and physicality. Though she doesn’t often choose to bring it to bear, Silva is strong in clinches, and combined with her quickness in space, it’s hard to find avenues of sustained success against Silva. Several fighters have exchanges or rounds from Silva, but it’s hard to do so consistently enough to win on the cards.
But Silva’s style also has some weaknesses; the biggest and most obvious is that she’s not especially threatening. Early in her UFC run, Silva showed a willingness to sit down on strikes, but that has all but disappeared from her game as she’s climbed the ladder, meaning she’s scoring points, not knockdowns. That style of fighting is always walking a tightrope, because you have to win 25 minutes, while more dangerous fighters only have to win a few seconds of a fight.
The other concern for Silva is her defense. While she sports one of the highest striking differentials in the UFC, most of her defense is tied up in range management, and she forgets her fundamentals at times, meaning she can be hit if you can simply get into range to hit her.
Of course, that might not matter if Silva diversifies her offense this fight. While she doesn’t use her wrestling often, Silva can wrestle, and was a pretty decent submission threat before she got to the UFC. Wang is a solid defensive wrestler, but her grappling is lacking, and Silva might simply have an easy run of things by taking the kickboxer down.
Paths to Victory for Wang Cong
Wang’s game is pretty straightforward: she’s a Sanda and Wushu kickboxer who also has accomplishments in kickboxing and boxing, but switched to MMA in 2022 because that’s where the money is. Considering she’s only been fighting in MMA for four years, she’s not doing half bad.
Where Silva’s game is predicated on getting in and out, Wang’s game is more about constant, consistent work. She wants to be at the edge of striking range and chipping away with jabs, calf kicks, and a stinging right hand. And most importantly, she throws to all three levels. Silva mostly head-hunts with boxing, and then mixes in switch kicks or spinning attacks; Wang uses low kicks at range and stabbing body shots, the sort of complete kickboxing game you see from someone who has been striking at a high level for over a decade.
Wang is also a better defensive fighter than Silva. While she can be hit, Wang generally does a good job of rolling or slipping shots, and she’s good at checking kicks. She’s also proven to be a strong defensive wrestler, and a handful in the clinch.
The major concern for Wang, aside from the grappling, is that she’s not especially quick, relying more on timing and distance than athleticism, and against Silva, that’s a problem, as Silva should be considerably more fleet of foot and hand in the cage. But if Wang can ignore Silva’s 500 feints per minute and rack up work to the legs and body, Silva should slow as the fight progresses, making her even more susceptible to Wang’s right hand.
Prediction
Stylistically, this fight favors Wang Cong. On paper, she should be able to keep pace with Silva’s volume at range, slow her down with dedicated leg and body work, and offer the more threatening power shots. The main concern is that while we’ve seen Wang do all of these things, we haven’t seen her do it at this level. Silva is a MASSIVE step up in competition from what Wang has fought in her MMA career, and ask any college football player, the game moves much quicker in the pros.
Is this Wang’s welcome to the NFL, rookie moment? Very possibly, but I’m gonna bank on her long history of winning striking battles and say her superior defense and timing will serve as a skeleton key to unravel Silva’s game.
Wang Cong def. Natalia Silva via TKO (punches) — 4:22, Round 4
