The ingredients making Saturday’s UFC 314 the early frontrunner for card of the year are easy to spot.

The guarantee of a new champion in a main event between a fan favourite attempting to extend an already hall-of-fame-worthy career, Alexander Volkanovski, and an out-of-nowhere grinder who’s overcome the odds at every step of his underdog journey, Diego Lopes.

A five-round co-main grudge match between name-brand action fighters — Michael Chandler and Paddy Pimblett — who seldom fail to entertain both on the mic and on the mat.

And a series of down-card matchups with legitimate stakes at hand that could dramatically raise or lower stocks via statements made or opportunities squandered. Here are three fighters entering Saturday with plenty to prove — and plenty to lose — in compelling matchups leading up to the top of the card.

Brazilian prospect factory Fighting Nerds was unquestionably 2024’s gym of the year, producing a steady stream of up-and-coming action fighters from Caio Borralho to Carlos Prates to Mauricio Ruffy. But none of the above were as active as their teammate Jean Silva, the 28-year-old featherweight who will step into the octagon Saturday for the fourth time in less than 10 months.

Silva has built an immense highlight reel along the way, knocking out Westin Wilson in his UFC debut, stopping veterans Charles Jourdain and Drew Dober within the span of 15 days, and lighting up Melsik Baghdasaryan in the first round earlier this year.

Blending sound, well-drilled technique with flair and unpredictability, Silva has proven dangerous anywhere and anytime in a fight. And the switch he flips, from respectful sportsman nearly tearing up during his introduction and offering double handshakes before rounds, to cold-blooded assassin calmly stalking opponents while searching for openings to exploit with one-punch power after fights begin, makes him as entertaining a watch as you’ll find in the sport today.

Yet Saturday’s matchup with Bryce Mitchell, an undeniably skilled grappling artist whose public persona is like the internet’s most imbecilic comment section come to life, ought to be his toughest test yet. Mitchell is the first ranked UFC opponent Silva has faced; the first ground specialist, too. Before Silva dropped him repeatedly, Jourdain scored multiple takedowns during their fight, exposing an opening in the Brazilian’s game that Mitchell will undoubtedly seek to exploit.

Of course, that presents plenty of possibility for Silva to do the things that make him so fun. Bursting forward with punishing combinations before darting out of range; leaning on his athleticism and speed to explode out of clinches and off the cage; letting his opponent lead while looking for opportunities to flow from defence into offence with strong counters, knees and spinning attacks.

Beating Mitchell will immediately insert Silva into the featherweight rankings and position him to face a top-10 opponent his next time out. And scoring another highlight-reel knockout in the process will ignite afterburners beneath his already soaring stock. It’s tough to choose who’s the most promising prospect from Fighting Nerds’ stable of young killers. But if he keeps doing what he’s been doing, Silva’s going to be tough to top.

Feb. 8, 2020, appeared to be an inflection point in Dominik Reyes’s career. That was the night he dropped a five-round decision to then light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones in a razor-thin fight many believed Reyes should have won.

Reyes out-struck Jones, 119-107, according to UFC Stats. He defended seven of nine takedown attempts and allowed Jones fewer than two minutes of control time. Of the 21 media members who submitted scorecards to MMA Decisions, 14 scored the fight for Reyes.

“Man, I do feel disrespected,” Reyes said afterward. “I know I won that fight — I know I won that fight.”

That loss didn’t only halt Reyes’s undefeated rise up UFC’s light-heavyweight ladder — it sent his career into a tailspin. He was knocked out in his next three fights — by Jan Blachowicz, Jiri Prochazka and Ryan Spann — throwing his future with the company into question.

But after sitting out for nearly two years, Reyes returned last June to decisively stop Dustin Jacoby in the first round before finishing an emotionally distracted Anthony Smith (the veteran’s coach and close friend, Scott Morton, suffered a heart attack weeks before the fight) in December.

Putting the discomfort of the Smith fight aside, Reyes has halted his freefall and created momentum in the opposite direction. On Saturday, he’ll face No. 8-ranked Nikita Krylov who’s returning from a two-year layoff of his own. That inactivity puts Krylov’s three-fight winning streak in a different context, as does the fact one of those victories came over Alexander Gustafsson, who left the UFC nearly three years ago.

Yet, with light-heavyweight being as shallow as it is, it doesn’t take much to reach the top 10 and enter the championship-contender conversation. And that’s exactly where Reyes can place himself with a win Saturday, which would have been a tough storyline to sell after he was dropped by Spann — a low-volume submission artist — two-and-a-half years ago.

At 35, this is likely Reyes’s final run up the rankings in pursuit of another title shot. And extending his streak against Krylov — who’s still only 32 and poses threats both on the feet and the mat — could leave Reyes needing only one more win over a name-brand opponent to challenge whoever’s holding the belt at year’s end. That gives Reyes as much to fight for Saturday as anyone on the card.

Saturday’s strawweight No. 1-contender fight with Chinese veteran Yan Xiaonan is not one Virna Jandiroba should have needed to take.

Only a few months ago, Jandiroba was already booked into a No. 1-contender fight against then-undefeated Tatiana Suarez at UFC 310, with the winner in line to challenge strawweight champion Zhang Weili. But that fight was suddenly cancelled after the oft-injured Suarez withdrew due to what the UFC cited as an unspecified health issue.

Yet those waters were muddied when Suarez challenged a report she was injured in a since-deleted social media post. And they grew even more opaque when Suarez was quickly rebooked straight into a fight with Zhang in February. And the water turned to sand when Suarez said, “I just think the UFC wanted this fight instead.” 

Left without her opportunity to earn that title shot, Jandiroba described the circumstances as “confusing” and “obscure.” Tough to blame her when she boasted two wins over top-10 strawweights in 2024 while Suarez hadn’t fought since the middle of 2023.

Regardless, Jandiroba remained positioned to fight the winner considering her multiple bookings with Suarez (the pair were first matched up in August 2023, but Jandiroba blew out her knee while training) and the fact she was the only remaining strawweight contender Zhang hadn’t faced. All she had to do was wait.

So, of course, she took to social media and repeatedly called for a fight with Yan, who was outclassed by Zhang a year ago. Turned out Jandiroba vs. Yan was a fight the UFC had no reservations over.

What’s the potential reward for Jandiroba here? Reinforcing beyond all doubt the No. 1-contender status she ought to already hold. What’s the risk? Losing it all while Yan gets booked into a rematch with Zhang; or watching the UFC fast-track someone outside the top five into a title shot.

It’s not a great cost-benefit proposition. But fighters such as Jandiroba — a Portuguese speaker and grappling specialist whose 10 UFC fights have all ended via submission or decision — must pad their resumes to an utterly undeniable degree to overcome the difficulties they’ll face breaking through on the entertainment side of the game.

Prior setbacks against Mackenzie Dern and Amanda Ribas have disrupted that pursuit, but Jandiroba enters Saturday on a four-fight winning streak, including a performance of the night bonus following her slick armbar of Amanda Lemos last July. Just as Zhang has mostly cleaned out the strawweight division, stringing together three straight dominant title defences since reclaiming the belt late in 2022, Jandiroba has been swatting away all contenders who have tried to jump her in the rankings.

A date with Zhang ought to be automatic if Jandiroba gets through Yan Saturday night. Should she already have that title shot without needing another win? Probably. Is the fight game unfair? Definitely. Jandiroba indicated her understanding of that in calling for this fight rather than sitting on the sidelines. And with another win on Saturday, she’ll have done all she can to leave UFC’s matchmakers nowhere else to turn.