Valentina Shevchenko is out for up to a year, and the belt she spent most of a decade defining went with her. The UFC confirmed on September 5 that the women’s flyweight champion had vacated the title after back and shoulder ligament injuries.
Natalia Silva and Wang Cong fight for the vacant championship in the UFC 332 main event on October 3 at Delta Center in Salt Lake City. It is the first numbered UFC main card to air on CBS, and the first time women have headlined an event of this size since Amanda Nunes at UFC 289 in 2023.
A Reign That Deserved a Better Exit
Shevchenko is 38 years old and 26-4-1. She took the flyweight title back from Alexa Grasso at UFC 306 in September 2024, then defended it against Manon Fiorot and beat former strawweight champion Zhang Weili by unanimous decision at UFC 322 in November.
Nobody asks for this version of the ending. Losing a championship to ligaments rather than to an opponent is the cruelest exit available, and a year on the shelf at 38 is the kind of gap that quietly ends careers long before anybody announces a retirement.
Natalia Silva Has Waited Long Enough
Silva is the deserving favorite, and the sportsbooks agree at roughly -210 to -263. She is 20-5-1 as a pro, 8-0 in the UFC, and carrying a 14-fight winning streak into the biggest night of her life.
Her last three opponents were Jessica Andrade, Alexa Grasso and Rose Namajunas. She beat all three by decision, and all three are former UFC champions. That is the top of a division cleared out one titleholder at a time, not a padded resume.
The complaint about Silva is that she wins on range and footwork instead of carnage, and the Namajunas fight at UFC 324 in January did her no favors with casual viewers. Fine. She has still beaten everyone the UFC put in front of her, which is the only qualification a vacant title fight actually requires.
Wang Cong Already Owns a Win Over Shevchenko
Here is the wrinkle that makes this card worth your Saturday night. Wang Cong beat Valentina Shevchenko by unanimous decision in a 2015 kickboxing bout under the Kunlun Fight banner in China, weeks before Shevchenko made her UFC debut.
Shevchenko has disputed that result for years, blaming the judging in Chinese promotions at the time and describing that system as “the worst.” Asked about a rematch, she said she was “not worried about that.” Now the fighter she waves off is competing for her vacated belt while she sits out a year.
Wang is 34, 10-1 as a pro and 5-1 in the UFC, on a four-fight run capped by a decision over Tracy Cortez at UFC 329 in July. She was a wushu world and Asian Games gold medalist before she ever put on gloves, took silver at the 2019 amateur boxing world championships, and owns one of the fastest knockouts in women’s flyweight history.
She is ranked No. 6 and jumping several levels at once, so Silva should win, and probably wins a clear decision. But the UFC accidentally booked the one woman on the roster who can point at a scorecard with Shevchenko’s name on the wrong side of it. That is a far better main event than this card has been given credit for.
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.