Natalia Silva will have to fight one more time to earn a title shot at UFC 324.<\/p>\n
Last month, the UFC announced that former flyweight champion Alexa Grasso would take on former strawweight champion Rose Namajunas in a high-profile bout on Jan. 24, 2026. However, on Wednesday, MMA Fighting confirmed that Grasso had withdrawn from the event, with No. 2-ranked Silva stepping in to replace her. Sherdog was first to report the switch<\/a>.<\/p>\n Silva (19-5-1) was the presumptive next title challenger for Valentina Shevchenko, with the champion even giving her shine after he win at UFC 322. She has amassed a 7-0 record in the UFC and recently took a unanimous decision over Grasso at UFC 315 in May.<\/p>\n Namajunas (14-7) is a former two-time strawweight champion, but moved up to 125 pounds in 2023. Sporting a 3-2 record in the division, Namajunas most recently took a unanimous decision over Miranda Maverick at UFC Atlanta in June.<\/p>\n UFC 324 takes place on Jan. 24 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n Mike Heck, Damon Martin, and Guilherme Cruz contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Natalia Silva will have to fight one more time to earn a title shot at UFC 324. Last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-325914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}