Payton Talbott Says Layoff Allowed Him to Evolve Ahead of UFC 332

Payton Talbott is set to make his return to the Octagon at UFC 332 on Oct. 3 at Delta Center in Salt Lake City, where he will face former flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo. The bantamweight prospect enters the matchup following a nine-month break from competition.

Talbott last competed in December, picking up a victory over former two-division UFC champion Henry Cejudo. While waiting for his next booking, Talbott spent much of the year dedicated to training and sharpening his overall game.

Speaking to the UFC ahead of the bout, Talbott addressed his extended time away from the cage. “Yeah, it was kind of weird,” Talbott said. “This is all still new to me, so I tried to just stay training and just stay ready. I mean, I trained pretty much the whole year, and I feel like I kind of reinvented myself a little bit and went back to my roots, went inward.”

Talbott explained that his evolution involved learning from external training environments while preserving the foundation that brought him initial success. “You go and train out of town, and you pick people's brains... But a lot of the times, the reason you got where you are is because of you,” Talbott noted. “And so, you just have to correctly learn how to implement it and not let it fully change you, but just use the best of what you learn.”