Preview: UFC 316 Prelims

UFC 316 marks the Ultimate Fighting Championship's return to New Jersey and it comes with a solid slate of eight prelims. Flyweights get a rare featured prelim spot as the UFC looks to highlight top prospect Joshua Van, who gets a sneakily difficult test against Bruno “Bulldog” Silva. In terms of other ranked fighters, Azamat Murzakanov and Brendson Ribeiro look to keep their momentum going at light heavyweight, heavyweight prospect Waldo Cortes-Acosta gets a big test against Serghei Spivac, and Cong Wang looks to knock off Ariane Lipski da Silva in a potentially violent flyweight affair. And even past that, there's some potentially entertaining action: Kalinn Williams becomes the first man to test hard-charging Swede Andreas Gustafsson inside of the Octagon, and a lightweight bout between Quillan Salkilld and Yanal Ashmouz stands out as a fun affair on paper.

Flyweights
Bruno “Bulldog” Silva (14-6-2, 1 N/C) vs. Joshua Van (13-2)
Odds: Van (-625), Silva (+455)

Van continues to have as much upside as any young fighter in the UFC, but he's certainly intent on taking the hard road to get there. Somehow still just 23 years old, Van made his professional debut in late 2021 and proved to be an absolute prodigy; he consistently added new tools from fight to fight, including a complete wrestling game in a matter of months, and was clearly UFC-ready about a year and a half into his career. Van's continued to succeed more often than not with his hard-charging style, winning six of his seven UFC bouts rather handily, but what's most notable is the ridiculous pace he's keeping up in terms of his schedule; Van's regional career saw him pack eight fights into fourteen months, and this marks the eleventh date Van has fought at or been scheduled to fight at in under two years on the roster. That'd be less of a worry if it wasn't for Van's approach; he's a consistently aggressive fighter that takes time to settle into fights, often tanking a ton of damage early but reliably heating up and becoming an absolute terror by the third round. Thus far, the durability of youth has mostly made that style a non-factor, but there is the concern that Van's continued acceptance of and reliance on his ability to take a beating will eventually result in him burning out at a younger age than expected. Three months after his last fight, Van's unsurprisingly back in action against Bruno Silva for what figures to be another tough war. Silva's on the shortlist of most underrated fighters on the UFC roster - at one point, "Bulldog" was even the less notable of two Bruno Silvas in the UFC - but he's been able to show out impressively against some lower-level competition, figuring out his opponents and scoring some brutal finishes despite not being much of an athlete. But in a division as dependent on athleticism as flyweight, the Brazilian has a clear ceiling, most clearly shown in what wound up as a one-sided beating against Manel Kape this past December. That figures to once again rear its head here against an elite prospect like Van, even though Silva has a better shot of cracking Van early and scoring a knockout than most of Van's previous opponents. But the likeliest scenario is still Van absorbing some early abuse to take over another fight by the end; the pick is Van via third-round knockout.

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Silva vs. Van
Murzakanov vs. Ribeiro
Spivac vs. Cortes-Acosta
Williams vs. Gustafsson
Mederos vs. Choinski
Lipski da Silva vs. Wang
Saragih vs. Yoo
Salkilld vs. Ashmouz