Valentina Shevchenko stayed quiet for weeks after the UFC announced she was no longer flyweight champion. She broke that silence only once Natalia Silva had the belt. On X, she congratulated the new titleholder, then added a warning: “keep it warm, I’m coming soon for my belt!” She tacked on a winking emoji in case anyone missed the tone.
Silva didn’t miss it. Speaking to Sherdog after UFC 332, the Brazilian said, “I waited a long time for Valentina,” and then walked through exactly how long. She was supposed to get Shevchenko. The UFC gave her Alexa Grasso in May 2025 instead, then Rose Namajunas in January. Her verdict on Bullet’s comeback plans was short. “She can just get in line.”
Good. She should hold that position until the UFC pries it out of her hands.
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Nine fights of paying dues
Look at the road Silva took to get here. She’s 9-0 in the UFC and has won 15 straight overall. She went through two former champions, Jessica Andrade and Grasso, and that should have been enough to earn her Shevchenko outright. It wasn’t. So rather than sit on the sidelines, she took Namajunas at UFC 324 in Las Vegas, once it became clear, as MMA Fighting reported, that Shevchenko would need more time before defending. That defense never came.
Then injury took the belt off Shevchenko, and Silva met No. 6-ranked Wang Cong for the vacant title on Oct. 3 in Salt Lake City. She won a unanimous decision in the main event and landed a clean head kick along the way, which the UFC’s own account posted while the fight was live. Wang said afterward that an early eye poke affected her. Silva told Sherdog her hand was closed. Dana White suggested Wang would regret her performance once she rewatched it, and Silva pushed back by quoting her coach: “Our strategy is so well executed that we’re able to impose our game plan and the opponent can’t do what she had planned to do.”
I’ll be honest. I’d rather watch a prelim slugfest than a title fight where one woman’s offense gets smothered for 25 minutes. Smothering it is still a skill, though, and Silva has now done it to everyone the UFC has put in front of her.
The case for Bullet, and why it comes up short
Here’s the strongest argument for Shevchenko. She never lost the belt in the cage. Ariel Helwani reported that she didn’t willingly vacate while dealing with injuries, and that the UFC assured her it would do right by her and keep a title shot waiting.
That’s a real argument. It also describes a promise from the front office, and those don’t win rounds. Shevchenko’s last defense came in November 2025, a decision win over Zhang Weili that stopped Zhang from becoming a two-division champion. That was an excellent night. Since then, the division has kept moving without her. Silva put it bluntly to MMA Fighting: “She would take a year between fights.” Nobody should blame a fighter for getting hurt. But a pattern of once-a-year appearances makes “keep it warm” an odd thing to say to the woman who fought three times while you were waiting.
Then there’s the “my belt” part, which Silva called the first thing Shevchenko got wrong in the post. That framing assumes the title has been sitting in a closet with Shevchenko’s name on it. It hasn’t. Silva fought for it, and the contenders behind her are fighting for it too. Grasso beat Manon Fiorot last month in a bout the UFC confirmed as a title eliminator, and Silva has named Erin Blanchfield as another possible first-quarter 2027 challenger.
There’s an honest wrinkle here, and Shevchenko’s camp will lean on it. As Bloody Elbow pointed out, Silva has already convincingly beaten Grasso, so a rematch is a harder sell. Fair. But an eliminator is an eliminator. If the UFC lets a sidelined former champ jump a woman who just won a fight billed as the path to the title, the word eliminator stops meaning anything.
Placeholder? Not to the woman holding it
MMA Mania wrote that Silva’s title is widely viewed as a placeholder until Shevchenko returns. Silva clearly doesn’t see it that way. Heavy noted she’s usually the reserved type, which made this response land harder. She told MMA Fighting, “To be honest, I’m not worried about Valentina anymore,” and explained she only wanted that fight because Shevchenko had the belt.
She didn’t slam the door, either. “If she wants to fight when she comes back, and there isn’t another fight that needs to happen, we can fight,” Silva said, before pointing to the rankings and the queue. That’s about as reasonable as a champion can be. She’s offering Shevchenko the same deal everyone else gets.
Silva says she doesn’t get injured and wants to fight in the first half of 2027. She also wants something she’s never had, a UFC fight at home. “I’ve never fought in the UFC at home,” she said. If the UFC wants to do right by somebody, book the champion in Brazil next spring against whoever earned it. Shevchenko can watch that one from cageside.
