Ever since he was first coming up through the ranks at flyweight, Deiveson Figueiredo’s coaches have been trying to tell him. They really have.
They tell him that it’s a bad idea to go into every fight with both guns blazing. They remind him that fighting at a frenetic pace invites an element of unnecessary risk. He listens, or at least he tries to.
“I try to be cautious, man,” Figueiredo said via an interpreter. “I try to be really cautious. I try to pace myself. There’s something furious inside me and I just go for it. I start getting into bangers. It’s so instinctive for me. It’s inside me and it’s what I want.”
For instance, consider his four title fights against Brandon Moreno. The first time, Figueiredo came in as the UFC flyweight champion and still fought with a sense of wild abandon. So wild, in fact, that he lost a point for a low blow and had to settle for a draw in a fight he otherwise would have won.
Then he fought Moreno again and lost. Then fought him again and won. Then fought him again and lost. That’s four fights, three title changes, two Fight of the Night awards and one Fight of the Year. Through it all, Figueiredo said, his team had encouraged him to chill just a bit, maybe fight smarter rather than harder. He did his best to listen because, as he came to realize, “When you go get into a shootout, you can always get shot.”
Still, the lesson didn’t finally sink in until he made the decision to move up a weight class. Going from the 125-pound division to the 135-pound class might not seem like a big jump — though when you start out at flyweight that extra 10 pounds is 8% of your body weight, at least on weigh-in day — but the difference in size and power at bantamweight forced him to improve in some ways.
“You have to be respectful of what you’re facing,” Figueiredo said. “We’re talking about guys who are stronger. They’re taller as well, so they have more range. But I think with every fight there I’m fine-tuning my size and power, too. With every fight I’ve had at [bantamweight], I feel like I’m bigger and stronger.”
With three straight wins since moving up in weight, Figueiredo now finds himself at a crucial point. He’s ranked fifth in the UFC’s internal rankings. This weekend in Macau, he faces former champ Petr Yan in the main event of a UFC Fight Night card that airs early Saturday morning in North America.
Yan is ranked third, two spots ahead of Figueiredo. Yan also has a recent loss to current bantamweight champ Merab Dvalishvili, as well as both of the champs who preceded Dvalishvili. This, according to Figueiredo, is indicative of a fighter who started off strong, but failed to evolve as needed.
“I think he’s been deciphered,” Figueiredo said. “I think people been have able to figure him out. I think that he didn’t improve, in the sense that he didn’t go out there and update his game. Every fight they’ve been able to figure out flaws and ways to beat him and figure out his weapons.”
If Figueiredo can beat him this weekend, that ought to move him up the rankings. Just how far remains to be seen and could depend on how good he looks in the process. But Figueiredo has also been at this sport long enough to know that getting a shot at the title is about more than just the fights you’ve won. It’s also about timing and opportunity, which he hopes will be on his side if it comes down to either him or Usman Nurmagomedov as the next bantamweight title challenger.
“I mean, I think the guy that they’ve been trying to put into a title fight is somebody that cannot fight during Ramadan,” Figueiredo said, referring to Nurmagomedov. “So pretty soon he’s not going to be able to fight. I’m a guy that can fight in any month, and all I need is three months between fights. After I win Saturday, I only need three months to fight five rounds. I’ll be ready.”
Clearly, this is a man who’s learned how life in the UFC often works. Whether he’s learned enough to capture a second title in a second weight class, putting him instantly in some elite company, we’ll know soon enough.
