Karine Silva walked out of the Meta Apex with her hand raised Saturday night, edging fellow ranked Brazilian Gabriella Fernandes by unanimous decision on the UFC Vegas 124 prelims. The judges couldn’t have been more in sync. It was 29-28, 29-28, 29-28 for Silva after a women’s flyweight fight that lived almost entirely in the clinch.
Anyone hoping for open-space fireworks got a grappling-heavy chess match instead. Fernandes grabbed early control along the fence, Silva reversed, and the two started trading knees before Silva went looking for a sweep that never came. Cageside Press noted they drifted off the cage a couple of times but kept finding their way back. In the last minute of Round 1, Fernandes was firing knees again before the positions flipped back and forth. Then came the moment that probably mattered most on the cards. Fernandes tried to drag Silva to the mat and Silva ended up on top, chopping at Fernandes’ legs until the horn.
Round 2 opened up a bit. Both women threw kicks to the body at center, and the volume climbed in the back half until they locked up against the fence again. Fernandes answered with knees, Silva with elbows, and a quick exchange followed the break before one more clinch closed the frame. Cageside Press had it close to even through 10 minutes, with everything riding on the third.
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Silva came forward to start Round 3, but Fernandes reversed her at the fence and dug in an underhook. Even with her back on the cage, Silva kept throwing knees and an elbow. They swapped positions twice more, and Fernandes got in a knee or two to the thigh before time ran out. Both fighters celebrated at the final horn, which tells you how tight it felt from inside the cage.
Sherdog had Silva entering at 19-7 and Fernandes at 11-4. The win moves Silva to 20-7 overall and 6-3 in the UFC. Fernandes falls to 11-5 and 3-4 inside the promotion. Fernandes came in at No. 15 in the flyweight rankings, with Silva sitting a couple of spots higher, and Cageside Press suggested Silva could move up a place or two once the rankings refresh.
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TSN’s Aaron Bronsteter summed up the scoring on X: “Good to see all three judges aligned on a relatively close fight.” That’s fair. In a fight this even, a split card wouldn’t have surprised anyone, and three matching 29-28s at least spared everyone a scorecard argument on social media.
My take is that Silva won this fight on the scramble at the end of Round 1. Fernandes started that sequence with a takedown attempt, and it ended with Silva on top kicking at her legs. In a fight where the knees on the fence mostly canceled each other out, judges remember who finished positions on top, and Silva did it when the round was on the line. Fernandes has nothing to hang her head about. She stayed even with a higher-ranked opponent for most of 15 minutes and owned plenty of the clinch work. Still, a 3-4 UFC record with the No. 15 spot under threat is a rough place to be. Silva gets the sixth UFC win, a probable bump in the rankings, and a stronger claim on a fight with someone above her.
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