A loss at UFC 332's co-main event (the second-billed fight on the card) would mean very different things for its two fighters: it likely ends Deiveson Figueiredo's run as a bantamweight contender at 38, while for 27-year-old Payton Talbott it would be a setback he has plenty of time to recover from. Both men are currently ranked in the UFC's official Bantamweight top 15, which is what makes this fight consequential for the division rather than just entertaining. The full tale-of-the-tape and betting-line breakdown of the matchup itself is on the Figueiredo vs. Talbott fight page.

A Former Champion Running Out of Runway

Figueiredo held the UFC flyweight title twice before moving up to bantamweight in late 2023, and he beat names like Marlon Vera — now the division's No. 10-ranked contender — early in that run. Since then, the story has turned: he has lost three of his last four fights, most recently a guillotine-choke submission (a chokehold applied from the front, across the throat) to Song Yadong in May 2026, following a unanimous-decision loss to Umar Nurmagomedov in January 2026.

Both of the men who beat him rank above him in the division today. Song Yadong sits at No. 3 and Nurmagomedov at No. 4 in the UFC's official bantamweight rankings, updated this week. Figueiredo himself is the No. 9-ranked bantamweight — a spot that reflects where his résumé has been, not where his last four fights suggest he's headed.

Another loss here, to a fighter ranked below him, would be his fourth defeat in five outings. That's a harder result to explain away as "lost to elite competition" than his losses to Song and Nurmagomedov were, since Talbott isn't yet in the division's upper tier the way they are.

A Contender's Biggest Test Yet

Talbott is fighting to move forward rather than to stop a slide. He's 11-1, and the only loss on his record is a decision to Raoni Barcelos in January 2025 — a fighter who currently sits at No. 13, three spots below Talbott in the same rankings. He answered that loss with decision wins over Felipe Lima and a retired Henry Cejudo, the pair of results that earned him his current No. 11 ranking.

None of those three fights came against someone ranked above him at the time. Figueiredo, at No. 9, is the first opponent above Talbott in the standings and by a wide margin the most accomplished name on his résumé to date — a fighter with 18 of 25 career wins by knockout or submission and two separate reigns as champion in another division. Beating him would be the clearest evidence yet that Talbott's ranking undersells him rather than flatters him.

What Each Man Needs on Saturday

For Figueiredo, the job is simply to stay in the conversation. He doesn't need to look dominant — a decision win (a fight that goes the scheduled distance and is scored by judges rather than ending in a finish) over a ranked opponent is enough to reset "lost three of four" to "lost three of five" instead of extending a skid that, at 38, he has less time to recover from than a fighter half a decade younger would.

For Talbott, the job is to confirm that the rankings committee had it right, or even underrated him. A clean win over a former two-time champion pushes him toward the division's top 10 and into range of the names above Figueiredo — Cory Sandhagen, Nurmagomedov, the men who make up the division's actual title picture. A loss, his second career defeat and his first to a fighter this experienced, would be the first real dent in a hype curve that has so far only gone up.

Why the Gap in Stakes Matters

Age is doing real work here. Figueiredo is 11 years older than Talbott, has already had two separate championship reigns at flyweight, and by any measure has less runway left in his career than a fighter with one loss on an 11-fight résumé. The fight page covers the stylistic matchup and the current betting line, which favors Talbott heavily. What that page doesn't cover — and what makes this fight worth watching beyond the styles — is that the two men are playing different games on the same Saturday: one trying to avoid an ending, the other trying to force a beginning.

The Takeaway

Whatever happens, the result says more about Talbott than about Figueiredo. A Talbott win gives him a signature victory and a real case for the top 10; a Talbott loss is a survivable check on a hot streak at 27. For Figueiredo, only a win keeps his story open — a fourth loss in five fights, at 38, less than three years into his bantamweight run, is the kind of stretch that tends to end a fighter's time near the top of a division rather than just interrupt it.