UFC 332 in Salt Lake City set a UFC record on Saturday for the most knockouts on a single card. Nine bouts ended by knockout or TKO in Round 1, and 11 of the 14 fights finished inside the distance. Only three went to the judges, and one of those crowned a champion.
That champion is Natalia Silva, who beat Wang Cong by unanimous decision (48-47 twice, 49-46) for the women’s flyweight title Valentina Shevchenko vacated because of injury. Silva entered at 20-5-1 on a 14-fight winning streak, with her last loss coming against Marina Rodriguez in December 2017. On a night built on violence, the main event was the only fight that saw a fourth round.
How the record got built
Anthony Wint needed 23 seconds to stop Lucas Armand, and he did it while weighing 236 pounds to Armand’s 263. Damian Pinas flattened Andrey Pulyaev with a single punch at 1:15, his third straight knockout. Jacobe Smith put away Bruce Whitehead at 1:32. Johnny Walker made his heavyweight debut and dropped Mick Parkin with a knee at 3:35, coming in at 242 against Parkin’s 265.
Roman Kopylov stopped Ateba Gautier at 3:12 of Round 1. One second earlier on the clock, though on a different fight, Imanol Rodriguez finished Alden Coria at 3:11 with a front kick to the body and follow-up punches. Esteban Ribovics ended King Green’s four-fight winning streak at 4:08. Marcus McGhee got rid of Anthony Romero at 4:58, with two seconds left before the horn.
The ninth was the biggest. Payton Talbott, 11-1 coming in and fresh off a unanimous decision over Henry Cejudo at UFC 323, stopped Deiveson Figueiredo with punches at 2:09 of Round 1 in the co-main. The former flyweight champion has now lost three straight, after defeats to Umar Nurmagomedov and Song Yadong, and is 1-5 across his last six Octagon appearances.
The two finishes past the first round came from Alexander Hernandez, who stopped Rafael dos Anjos at 3:12 of Round 2, and Eric Nolan, who knocked out Court McGee at 3:26 of Round 3. Roberto Soldic outpointed Khaos Williams and Ismail Naurdiev beat Marvin Vettori in the other decisions.
The fallout
The bill came due afterward. MMA Mania reported that three fighters were taken to the hospital after the event and that a broken jaw was confirmed. Yahoo Sports framed the night as a record set by a card fans had panned and Dana White had struggled to promote, and a separate Yahoo piece noted that White went after the event’s so-called experts, while arguing those critics weren’t entirely wrong.
The promotion used the broadcast to announce that Charles Oliveira will defend his BMF title in the main event of UFC 335 on December 12 in Las Vegas, and Alex Pereira is set to return on that card.
My take: the critics were right about the poster and wrong about the fights, and both can be true. Nobody was buying this card on Pinas and Wint, but the record belongs to fighters most casual viewers couldn’t have picked out of a lineup on Friday, and those are the people whose phones should be ringing this week. The result I keep coming back to is the co-main. Talbott did in 2:09 what Nurmagomedov and Song needed far longer to do, and Figueiredo, the man who once held the flyweight belt, now has one win in his last six fights.
