The UFC heads back to Macau on Saturday and the main event has every reason to deliver the best fight on Paramount Plus this month.
Song Yadong, the No. 5-ranked bantamweight in the world, hosts a five-round main event in front of his home crowd against No. 7-ranked Deiveson Figueiredo. The card is UFC Fight Night: Song vs Figueiredo. The card streams live and on demand on Paramount Plus on May 30 from Galaxy Arena.
On paper, this is the most stylistically intriguing main event of the spring slate. In practice, it might be the fight that decides the next title shot at 135 pounds.
What Song Yadong Brings
Song Yadong is the most polished striker in the bantamweight top five. He is 22-7-1 with one no contest, has finished three of his last five opponents, and has built his reputation on the kind of precise hand speed that bantamweights with bad takedown defense cannot handle.
Song fights smart. He picks his spots, he punishes mistakes, and he has the cardio to stretch fights into the deep rounds when he needs to. His combination work is the best in the division outside of the champion. He is also fighting in front of a Chinese crowd that adopted him as their guy years ago. The home-field advantage is real.
The knock on Song has always been his wrestling and his ability to get back to his feet after he gets put down. He has gotten significantly better over the last two years, but Figueiredo is the kind of opponent who will test the improvements.
What Figueiredo Brings
Deiveson Figueiredo moved up from flyweight to bantamweight 18 months ago and has been a different fighter at the new weight. The 38-year-old former flyweight champion looks faster, stronger, and more dangerous at 135 pounds than he did defending his title at 125 pounds. His record is now 25-3-1.
Figueiredo’s grappling has always been his weapon. He has 12 submission wins on his career resume. He has the kind of clinch game that can drag any fight into the place where Song does not want to be. His punching power is also legitimate, especially at the new weight, where he is the bigger man in most matchups.
The cardio is the question. Figueiredo has gone five rounds before but he has not done it consistently at bantamweight. If Song can survive the first two rounds and force Figueiredo to wrestle a faster, sharper striker for 20 minutes, the cardio gap should open up.
The Title Picture
The winner of this fight slots in directly behind the bantamweight champion in the title picture. The top of the division is loaded with Merab Dvalishvili holding the belt, Petr Yan still in the rankings, Cory Sandhagen looming, and Umar Nurmagomedov waiting for his next title shot.
Song would jump into the No. 3 ranking and force a conversation about a title shot before the end of the year. Figueiredo would push himself into the top five and continue his late-career run as the most accomplished flyweight to ever move up successfully to bantamweight.
The loser of the fight does not fall out of the rankings, but their next path back to a title shot becomes a longer one.
The Prediction
This is a coin-flip fight. The lines have moved several times in the week leading up. Song is the slight favorite because of his home advantage and because Figueiredo is fighting at 1 a.m. local time in Brazil, which is the kind of small disadvantage that matters in championship rounds.
The prediction here is Song by decision in a fight that is closer than the scorecards suggest. He picks Figueiredo apart with his jab for two rounds, survives a third-round grappling exchange that costs him a round on the scorecards, and pulls away in the fourth and fifth with cardio and ring IQ.
If Figueiredo lands a clean shot in the first two rounds, all bets are off. He has the power to end fights early. The fight could be over in 90 seconds or it could go 25 minutes.
Either way, set the alarm for Saturday morning. This is the UFC main event of the spring.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
