UFC 332 lands Saturday at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, and the broadcast matters as much as the fights. This is the first UFC numbered-event main card to air on CBS, with the main card also on Paramount+ and the prelims on Paramount+ and Fight Pass.
Early prelims start at 4 p.m. Eastern, prelims at 6 and the main card at 8. It is the promotion’s first trip to Salt Lake City since UFC 307 in October 2024.
The Main Event Exists Because Shevchenko Broke Down
Natália Silva and Wang Cong meet for the vacant women’s flyweight championship, and neither of them was supposed to be in this position.
Two-time champion Valentina Shevchenko withdrew and vacated the belt after suffering what the promotion described as a ligament injury to her back and shoulder that will sideline her for a year. Silva was originally booked in the co-main slot against her. With the champion gone, that fight became the headliner and the title became available.
Silva is the No. 1 contender and is 8-0 inside the UFC, which is the kind of run that should have earned a title shot on its own merit rather than through an injury. Wang is 5-1 in the promotion and enters at No. 8. Silva is favored at roughly minus-210 against Wang’s plus-177.
The Rest of the Main Card Is Better Than the Billing
Deiveson Figueiredo faces Payton Talbott at bantamweight in a fight the oddsmakers consider a formality. Talbott sits around minus-600 with Figueiredo at plus-451, which is a remarkable line against a former champion and the clearest statement yet about where the sport thinks Figueiredo is in his career.
The lightweight bout between “King” Green and Esteban Ribovics is the one most likely to be chaos, with Ribovics favored at minus-235. Roberto Soldić meets Khaos Williams at welterweight as a minus-325 favorite, and Ateba Gautier faces Roman Kopylov at middleweight.
A note for anyone cross-referencing cards: some listings place Marvin Vettori vs Ismail Naurdiev and Jacobe Smith vs Bruce Whitehead on the main card. The UFC’s own listing has both on the early prelims.
Somebody Took This Fight on Three Days’ Notice
The prelims lost Bernardo Sopaj to injury on Tuesday, and Anthony Romero stepped in against Marcus McGhee with three days to prepare. The bout also moved up from bantamweight to featherweight to accommodate it.
Romero is 26, carries a 7-2 record and is making his promotional debut. McGhee is 11-2 and ranked 15th at bantamweight. Taking a short-notice UFC debut against a ranked opponent at a weight above the one you planned for is close to the hardest possible entry into the promotion.
Dana White Turned a Fight Announcement Into a Stream Bit
The oddest story around this card has nothing to do with the card. White tied the reveal of Alex Pereira’s next fight to a comment threshold, promising the announcement once Nina Marie Daniele’s Instagram post cleared 25,000 comments.
It cleared. White has confirmed the announcement will come Saturday during UFC 332 on her Kick stream. No opponent, date or weight class has been named.
Pereira is coming off a knockout loss to Ciryl Gane at the White House event in June, in his heavyweight debut. His next booking decides whether he stays at heavyweight or drops back to light heavyweight, which is a genuine divisional question being delivered through a comment-count promotion.
The Division Above Is Still a Mess
Gane is the undisputed heavyweight champion after Tom Aspinall vacated the title following multiple eye surgeries, though the promotion needed a public reversal to get there. White initially said Gane “still got to fight” to be undisputed, and the broadcast team later said he had misspoken.
Gane is 14-2-1 and 36 years old, and defends against Josh Hokit at UFC 334 on November 14 at Madison Square Garden. Saturday in Salt Lake City is the warmup act for a far stranger November.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.