Natalia Silva has had the UFC flyweight title for a few days, and she’s already heard from the woman who used to own it. She’s not handing it back.
Silva beat Wang Cong by unanimous decision this past Saturday in the UFC 332 main event in Utah to claim the vacant 125-pound belt. The title opened up after Valentina Shevchenko got hurt. Shevchenko had said nothing publicly since the UFC announced she was out as champion. Then, right after Silva’s win, she posted a congratulations on X with a warning tucked inside, complete with a winking emoji and a trophy. She called Silva a “deserving martial artist” and then added “keep it warm, I’m coming soon for my belt!”
Silva thanked her. Then she went to work in an interview with MMA Fighting.
“It’s nice that she had time to watch the fight, right?” Silva said, laughing.
The possessive is what got under her skin. “The belt isn’t hers anymore, the belt is mine,” Silva said. “I’m the champion. I fought for this, I earned it, so I’m the champion now.”
As for the keep-it-warm line, Silva threw it right back. “She wasn’t even keeping it warm herself. She would take a year between fights,” she said.
The calendar backs her up. Shevchenko’s last defense came in November 2025, a decision win over Zhang Weili that kept Zhang from becoming a two-division champion. Silva was already sitting on wins over former champs Jessica Andrade and Alexa Grasso at that point. Once it became clear Shevchenko wouldn’t be defending anytime soon, Silva took a fight with Rose Namajunas two months later. Shevchenko never did defend again.
Now Silva, who hasn’t lost in nine years, says she’s done planning her life around Shevchenko. She wants to fight in the first half of next year and pointed out that she doesn’t get injured in her fights, which reads as a fact and a jab at the same time.
“To be honest, I’m not worried about Valentina anymore,” Silva said. She told MMA Fighting she’s open to the fight if Shevchenko comes back and nothing else is more pressing, but added that “we also have to look at the rankings and the queue.”
The two names she floated for the first quarter of 2027 were Grasso, whom she’s already beaten, and Erin Blanchfield. She also said she’d love to defend the belt in Brazil, where she’s never fought in the UFC, and that her fans ask for it constantly.
My take: Silva has the better argument and she knows it. Shevchenko is one of the great champions this division has had, but you don’t get to call it “my belt” after the UFC took it off you for inactivity and injury, especially via a tweet with three emojis on the end. The champion who wants to fight every few months gets to set the line. If Blanchfield is ready in the first quarter of 2027, that’s the fight, and Shevchenko can buy a ticket.
