Outside Source
Currently riding a seven-fight win streak with a possible shot at the flyweight crown looming, Natalia Silva passed her biggest tests in her last two outings. Beating former champs Jessica Andrade and Alexa Grasso on the scorecards, Silva elevated herself all the way to the No. 2 spot on Sherdog’s Official Rankings at women’s 125 pounds. Unfortunately for her, championship aspirations are still just that, as she has not yet been booked against defending champ Valentina Shevchenko.
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According to the head coach of Team Borracha, Carlos Costa—brother of the fan-favorite Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight Paulo Costa—Silva is primed for greatness and ready to take off. Believing she has done the work to be eligible for a belt in her next outing, “Borracha” feels at the bare minimum that she can be a backup if she is not chosen outright.
“Of course, our main focus is to dispute the belt, but in case [the] UFC decides to make Valentina against [Weili] Zhang, she will be ready to be the reserve fighter,” guaranteed the head coach.
The technical evolution of Silva in recent years makes Costa comfortable in pitching that she could give Shevchenko a tough fight.
“Natalia didn’t need to use her jiu-jitsu yet,” Costa noted, “but she is a tough and very technical brown belt with good techniques both from bottom and top. Her arm lock is nasty.”
Silva will have plenty of footage to break down Shevchenko. Their team can study the trilogy between Grasso and Shevchenko not only as recent examples of fight style, but as main focus given that they competed for over 70 minutes in the Octagon.
“These three fights gave a lot of content for us to analyze Valentina,” the coach stated. “But the key point of that fight will be the evolution of Natalia’s wrestling. Nobody is dedicated like this girl. She evolved a lot in all areas in [the] last [few] years and she still evolving. Of course, we respect Valentina a lot, [who] is a legend of the sport and all three tops of the division, but I don’t see any girl today to beat Natalia in that division. I truly believe that she will be with that flyweight belt by 2026.”
Coach ‘Borracha’ Helped Raise Silva Like His Daughter
Silva recalled how he met Natalia for the first time, telling Sherdog that, “She came from a very small city [called] Pingo-d’Agua to fight in Gladiators, an event I used to promote here in my city [of] Contagem. She won via submission and I got really impressed by her. She didn’t know that there was a Fight Finder called Sherdog, so her first four fights were all losses and were not officially registered [Editor’s note: they are all added now]. After that win in my city, I saw a lot of potential in her and invited her to train with me. Once she [ran out of money], she started to live in my academy.”
Living in the physiotherapy room of his academy and training three times a day, Silva was quick to study new fields like defensive wrestling, boxing and jiu-jitsu. Costa suggests that she took to it like a fish to water. Building up her skills, the Brazilian secured the Jungle Fight belt in 2019 and defended it later that year. With a six-fight win streak under her belt—all by submission—Paulo Costa introduced her to UFC matchmaker Mick Maynard. She was immediately hired.
Right after signing with the UFC, Silva had to face her first major obstacle when the COVID-19 pandemic locked down all academies in Brazil.
“[As] the owner of the gym, we kept doing secret training at closed doors,” Costa admitted. “And it was funny that when a police car passed in front of the street, we had to turn off all lights and hide.”
Feeling sorry that Silva moved away from her family and loved ones to live by herself in the Team Borracha academy, Costa and his wife decided to take action.
“My wife agreed, and since 2021, Natalia started to be our fourth daughter. Actually, she still lives with us today. Another great point of that is that I started to control her food and discipline,” the coach remarked.
While she was signed in 2020, her first fight in the Octagon did not come for nearly two and a half years. The woman, now 28, sustained multiple major injuries that kept pushing her debut.
“She just trains with men,” Costa noted. “First, she got a forearm fracture that [forced] her to postpone her UFC debut [by] four months. When the arm was calcified, she got a broken nose that needed surgery. But three months after that, she was finally able to debut, defeating Jasmine Jasudavicius in June 2022.”
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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