The UFC flyweight champion is here — and he may be sticking around for a long while. Deiveson Figueiredo once again demolished his competition in the main event of UFC 255, this time choking out late-replacement challenger Alex Perez with a grisly guillotine in less than two minutes.
As always there’s no shortage of post-fight threads to tug on, so let’s jump straight into the night’s biggest takeaways.
1. Never in doubt
Thank the blood gods that the UFC never completely abandoned its men’s flyweight division, otherwise we’d have no way of appreciating what Deiveson Figueiredo is doing right now. The reigning UFC flyweight champion was once again both peerless and breathtaking in his two-minute romp over Alex Perez in Saturday night’s main event.
Demetrious Johnson will likely always hold the car keys as the greatest flyweight of all-time, but Figueiredo may end up being history’s most dangerousflyweight once all is said and done. The Brazilian simply oozes raw power with his every move inside the cage. He carries with him a sense of real chaos, a sense of impending danger that no flyweight — past or present — has truly embodied. It’s brilliant to watch, and it’s helped Figueiredo turn a once unthinkable proposition into a legitimate question, one for which I’m not sure the answer.
Is there a chance Deiveson Figueiredo may sneak into pole position for Fighter of the Year by the end of 2020?
UNDER TWO MINUTES.
🏆 @Daico_Deiveson's legacy is off and running! #UFC255 pic.twitter.com/kCZdnIAtPM
— UFC (@ufc) November 22, 2020
Actually sit down and think about it. Even despite his weigh-in miss back in February, Figueiredo’s résumé for the year looks fairly spectacular: 3-0 with three first- or second-round stoppages in UFC title fights. Now add in UFC president Dana White’s announcement at Saturday’s post-fight press conference that the promotion is booking Figueiredo’s next title defense for Dec. 12 at UFC 256 (more on that in a moment), and there’s suddenly a roadmap here for Figueiredo to be waving around a shiny 4-0 record in 2020 title fights once award time rolls around. Even if everything else breaks right for the rest of the current field — Kevin Holland, Khamzat Chimaev, and Jan Blachowicz — Figueiredo’s potential 4-0 record could stack right up there alongside anyone. Heck, when’s the last time a UFC champion defended their title and literally booked their next fight (date/opponent/everything) the same night?
It may seem crazy that an athlete could miss weight for a title fight and still end up as the Fighter of the Year, but 2020 is theyear of crazy, after all. The next five weeks should be very interesting.
2. Battles of the Brandons
Speaking of crazy, how cool is it to see what Brandon Moreno is doing right now?
Consider what we’ve been through with this man. Back in 2016, “The Assassin Baby” was ranked No. 16 out of the 16 flyweights on his “The Ultimate Fighter” season. Dead last. Forever the underdog. He was even cut from the UFC in the great flyweight exodus of 2018. Guess how many of those same TUF 24 cast members aside from him are still fighting on the big stage? Just four — Alexandre Pantoja, Tim Elliot, Kai Kara France, and Matt Schnell. Yet old No. 16 continues to defy expectations time and time again, grinding his way to top contention the hard way. Stories like Moreno’s are what make this sport so damn great.
At this point, there is no debate — the next UFC flyweight title shot belongs to Moreno. He probably already deserved to fight for it over Perez, but his case became inarguable after his first-round stoppage of Brandon Royval at UFC 255. No other contender in the division has the recent résumé to match. Moreno fights with an infectious enthusiasm, he’s fun as hell on the microphone, and at 26 years old, he’s still evolving his game every time we see him. Considering the amount of times he’s surprised the MMA world by now, would it really be a shock to see him unseat a seemingly unbeatable champion like Figueiredo? I’m long past the point of trying to put a ceiling on what Moreno is capable of. It’s time for him to get what he’s earned. And hey, if he’s fine with a three-week turnaround to fight Figueiredo on Dec. 12 at UFC 256, so am I.
Also, let’s stop for a second and heap oodles of credit upon Royval, who barely even batted an eye post-fight when his coach, Marc Montoya, popped Royval’s shoulder back into place in the cage. Just stupid toughness. I’m not really sure the slow-motion replay was necessary there, but I’ll say it again just as I’ve said it a thousand times — these athletes aren’t getting paid nearly enough to do this.
3. We’re doing it again…
My old colleague Dave Doyle of USA Today put it best Saturday night when hetweetedthat Valentina Shevchenko has officially crossed over into the elusive land where people start freaking out the moment she loses a single round.
He’s right. This is where we’re at with the UFC women’s flyweight champion. If an opponent improbably manages to eke out a single round, even if it’s a totally uninspired round in which zero actual offense is landed, we all briefly lose our heads. (I’m staring straight at you, Joe Rogan.) It’s a special plane of greatness few champions reach, but it’s not even surprising when you consider the context. Shevchenko has been more than a 10-to-1 favorite in her last four title fights. That number climbed to 14-to-1 or above in three of them, including UFC 255’s astonishing betting line of 20-to-1. Frankly, that’s obscene. You know who can’t make a claim like that about their betting lines? Literally any other fighter in UFC history. Not Georges St. Pierre, not Jon Jones, not Anderson Silva, and not Amanda Nunes.
Valentina Shevchenko defeated Jennifer Maia by unanimous decision at UFC 255 on Saturday. (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
That says something about Shevchenko’s dominance, sure, but it says more about the talent pool in Shevchenko’s division. Flyweight is neither a good nor interesting division right now, and it’s one that feels decidedly worse when Shevchenko has performances like her uneventful decision over Jennifer Maia at UFC 255. That’s not a knock on the champ. Every great fighter is allowed a boring fight here or there. Shevchenko said afterward that it took her a little time to feel at ease after recently getting surgery to repair a torn MCL, and that showed — Saturday was one of those occasional Shevchenko title defenses that’s just frustrating to watch, and one you’ll never pull up on UFC Fight Pass to catch again. It was also her most competitive fight of the last two or three years, yet the outcome was never once in doubt.
Again, for better or worse, this is just where we’re at with Shevchenko. Even on her off nights, there’s never a real sense of tension in the air, no sense of possibility around the champ.
Fortunately, that could change the next time we see her. If Jessica Andrade wasn’t already the shoo-in No. 1 contender for Shevchenko’s next bout, she better be after Saturday night. This division badlyneeds a title fight that has a whiff of competitiveness. Andrade just trucked through Katlyn Chookagian in less than a round, the same Chookagian who preserved her spot atop the flyweight rankings at UFC 255 with a win over Cynthia Calvillo. There’s no need to wait here. Sorry, Lauren Murphy. Book Shevchenko vs. Andrade next and let’s actually all be able to get excited about a Shevchenko title defense for the first time since 2018.
4. Test, aced
All week, anytime I thought about Joaquin Buckley vs. Jordan Wright, I couldn’t but wanderback to the words of Yves Edwards.
It just felt like the perfect trap fight. Think about it. Buckley just spent five weeks riding high off the year’s most viral knockout, five months of hearing the whole world sing his praises. The pressure on his shoulders to either repeat or top his flashy feat must have been off the charts, especially for a prospect as green as him. Add that with getting thrown right back into the fray against an unknown but dangerous opponent in Wright — the type of opponent who’d be all too easy to disregard for a young fighter in Buckley’s position — and it felt like the perfect recipe for a hype train to get derailed before it even left the station.
Instead, Buckley shined.
It’s clear by now the 26-year-old has grenades surgically embedded in his limbs. He basically knocked out Wright twice in less than six minutes. The second time was particularly nasty. Buckley admitted later in the night that he did indeed felt the pressure of being the Flashy Knockout Guy in the opening round. Such candidness is appreciated, but the important thing is that Buckley kept his discipline tight and pushed through any urges to go wild.
In the end, it was a perfect follow-up act, even down to Buckley’s He Who Shall Not Be Named callout of James Krause for UFC 257 on Jan. 23 — a rivalry that may or may not have started because a fake Buckley Twitter account trolled Krause. I love it. The UFC would be crazy to not put this man in front of a Conor McGregor audience. Buckley has notched two outrageous knockouts in a span of 41 days, earned $100,000 in bonus cash while skyrocketing his social media presence, and is now heading into 2021 with a truckload of hype and fight already in the mix to get excited about. Talk about making the most of your moment. Young fighters, take heed.
5. Please, just think about it
Look, I understand that Mauricio Rua was riding an unbeaten three-fight run heading into UFC 255, but deep down we all knew that streak always felt like smoke and mirrors. And seeing Rua suffer a one-sided beating to a like he did in Saturday’s pay-per-view opener against Paul Craig was just really, profoundlysad to watch.
We hit this part of Rua’s career a while ago, the get-thrown-against-young-
I really don’t want to see a bunch of young and hungry light heavyweights make their name off a living legend like Rua over the next few years. We’ve already seen this story play out with plenty of other Hall of Famers and it hasn’t been fun. For his sake, I hope Rua considers calling it quits.I’m not alone either.Knowing how dedicated Rua is to the fight game, that ultimately may be a pipe dream. But a man can still dream.
(Top photo: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
