In her promotional debut, Silva completely out-worked Jasmine Jasudavicius in a bout that has aged exceptionally well for both women as they’ve continued to work forward in the talent-rich 125-pound ranks. Stoppage wins over Tereza Bleda and Victoria Leonardo followed before she started carving her way through ranked opponents.
First was Andrea Lee, followed by fellow Brazilians Viviane Araujo and Jéssica Andrade in 2024; the former is the veteran litmus test every hopeful needs to pass in order to progress into the Top 10, and the latter is a former strawweight champ and flyweight title challenger constantly at the ready to turn away those keen to break into the Top 5. Last year in Montreal, Silva established herself as the top contender in the flyweight division, rolling into UFC 315 and pitching a shutout against former champion Alexa Grasso in her first bout since going back-to-back-to-back with Valentina Shevchenko.
But when two-time strawweight queen Zhang Weili opted to relinquish her title in order to challenge Shevchenko for the flyweight belt, Silva’s path to challenging for gold ran into a detour. Thankfully, an opportunity at the start of the year presented itself.
“I wanted to fight for the belt, but UFC told me, ‘Natalia, Valentina can’t fight now. You need to do one more fight because you can’t be stopped,’” Silva said, raising her hand to replace Grasso opposite Namajunas this weekend on the first UFC fight card on Paramount+. “I told my team, and my team told me, ‘You can do this fight. It will be very important’ because if I want to be the champion, I need to (beat all) the best fighters.
