Ariane Lipski da Silva was released from the UFC just days after losing a decision to Wand Cong in June 2025, and that was close to being the last fight of her MMA career. Months after that, however, she fell in love again and signed a deal with the Professional Fighters League.
Former KSW flyweight champion “Queen of Violence” makes his PFL debut Saturday in Pittsburgh, facing off with longtime Bellator veteran Sumiko Inaba, and opened up on her near-retirement ahead of her first fight in nine months.
“I considered retiring because I had big plans, I really believed I could achieve my goals in the UFC,” da Silva told MMA Fighting. “For six years that I was in the UFC, I gave everything I had to make that happen. It didn’t, and I was like, ‘Okay, so what am I going to do? Am I going to stop now, have a child?’— because I do want our family to grow. For a moment I thought about stopping, but I realized I still have more to show, you know? I still have more to show inside the cage, and I believe my career wasn’t meant to end like that. Then the opportunity to debut in the PFL came, and it worked out, and now we’re here.”
Da Silva went 6-8 in the UFC after coming in hot from a perfect 5-0 run in KSW and felt she was underdelivering in the octagon. On top of a three-fight skid with defeats to Karine Silva, Jasmine Jasudavicius and Cong, the Brazilian still had to deal with a recently-found benign tumor on her pituitary gland, which allegedly caused her UFC 316 weight miss.
“The process wasn’t quick,” da Silva said. “I didn’t stop training altogether, but it wasn’t my main goal. I took about two weeks off because my leg was pretty hurt, and I also took time to deal with the prolactin [issue] I had discovered. So I took about a month where I was more relaxed, training lighter. I automatically went back to training after that, but without thinking about competition, without thinking about fighting. In fact, I said, ‘I don’t think I want to compete anymore.’ The disappointment of losing a goal you believed in so strongly is huge. It’s so big that you can’t even find joy in competition anymore, you know? I told [coach/husband] Renato [da Silva], ‘I don’t think I can do it, but I’ll keep training.’”
“I was really enjoying training, but there came a moment when I felt discouraged,” she continued. “He said, ‘Just keep training anyway [laughs]. Just go.’ But it was a long process, about two or three months. It was a healing process, of understanding that I am not that goal I had set for myself. Of finding who I really am, my goals, my purpose, and also seeing in training that I was evolving a lot. And then I said, ‘I still have a lot to show that I haven’t shown yet.’”
Life changed after leaving the UFC, da Silva said, Without having to worry about weight cuts, training camps and planning strategies for opponents, she felt lighter to just have fun in the gym like back in the early days. Doctors said she can still get hit in the face despite the diagnosis, but have to be smarter with her diet. Weeks went by and da Silva felt like evolving as an athlete at last, and the fire to compete burned one more time. Da Silva gave her manager the green light to talk to PFL about a potential deal and she’s now moments away from entering the cage to face Inaba in a 15-minute flyweight showdown.
Inaba scored half of her eight professional victories by knockout, but da Silva expect her to try something else in Pittsburg.
“She’s a striker, but I noticed that in her fight against Dakota [Ditcheva] that she tried to take Dakota down in later rounds,” da Silva said. “I saw that in some previous fights as well, so I believe she’s coming in looking to wrestle. She trained to take me down, you know? But she’s also an athlete who isn’t afraid to stand and strike. I see a lot of openings and many advantages I can have over her game.”
The PFL flyweight title is still vacant and “Queen of Violence” knows that her name carries a history in the division given her KSW and UFC past. She doesn’t expect an immediate shot at Ditcheva next, as she hears rumblings of a possible Ditcheva vs. Luz Carmouche championship showdown for July, but eyes a spot on the same card.
“I believe they would give me one more fight,” da Silva said, “and that would leave me with No. 3 ranked Taila [Santos] and No. 4 Denise [Kielholtz]. I think they would be good options would be for me to fight around the same time Liz Carmouche fights Dakota, on the same card, and then I would be the next title challenger. PFL is big in Europe so I definitely have a strong desire to have my next fight there. I think Denise would be even better because she’s from there.”
