UFC 332 was a wild card featuring a record setting number of knockouts, but the women’s flyweight title fight between Natalia Silva and Wang Cong did not follow suite. Instead, it dragged on for five rounds and looked more like a mid-card Fight Night bout than the headliner of a numbered UFC main event.
That’s fitting, because that’s exactly what it was — while Natalia Silva was the legit No. 1 contender, Wang had never fought off the prelims in her UFC career prior to Salt Lake City. If it wasn’t for the UFC’s desperate need for gold at the top of every major card, they wouldn’t have asked Valentina Shevchenko to vacate her belt to make this fight.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that Wang looked under-prepared and easily flustered during her fight with Silva, rushing into endless clinches instead of keeping her Brazilian opponent on the end of her punches. Silva was content to hit her combos and move backwards, making for a less than exciting dance.
“I think that when Wang goes back and watches the film, she’s going to hate herself,” UFC CEO Dana White said at the UFC 332 post-fight press conference. “If she had stepped on the gas a little earlier, it would have been a completely different fight. It was close.”
Now we’re hearing from Wang, who says an eye poke in the first round mucked up her performance.
“Thank you for supporting my friends. The game is lost,” Cong said on social media in Chinese, with English subtitles baked into the video. “What a pity. I have some regrets.”
“Then because of the first [round] my eye was poked in the second half,” she continued. “The line of sight was blocked and then wait until later to slow down. It’s too slow to enter. Where to fall, get up. Go back and summarize yourself. Come on and try again.”
Cong definitely picked up steam in the latter half of the fight, with one judge giving her the third round and another judge giving her rounds four and five. Silva did just enough to take the fight on all three scorecards, though, earning a 49-46, 48-47, and 48-47 unanimous decision. For those hoping the fight would inject some excitement into the women’s 125 pound division, it wasn’t great. But we’re used to that at this point.
