We just witnessed a pretty epic finale to a trilogy of heavyweight fights between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder, all three of which were spectacular to watch. Trilogies like that don’t come along very often in boxing, but we feel like MMA fans are a bit more spoiled. We’re in the midst of our own epic trilogy in the making between flyweights Deiveson Figueiredo and Brandon Moreno.
Their first fight in December of 2020 was ruled a majority draw, largely off the champ Figueiredo hitting Moreno with accidental fouls. In the rematch, many expected Moreno to lose, but instead saw “The Assassin Baby” survive some early trouble to catch Figueiredo in a third round rear naked choke. Now the two will fight for a third time at UFC 270 on January 22nd, 2022 and there’s an extra wrinkle of drama to this final fight.
For this bout, Figueiredo is training with Henry Cejudo … who was Brandon Moreno’s training partner back before Brandon apparently ‘betrayed’ him.
“I love to be here and when I arrived Cejudo told me about Brandon Moreno,” Figueiredo said in an interview with MMA Junkie. “Moreno lived two years in Cejudo’s house and after that left for another camp to help [Joseph] Benavidez fight Cejudo. He betrayed Cejudo. I’m going to be very happy in taking Moreno’s head off and giving it to Cejudo because in our sport you can’t be a traitor.”
Deiveson will also get to work with Cejudo’s coach Eric Albarracin, whose other students include Paulo Costa, Chan Sung Jung, and Patricio Freire.
“I come here because the main thing was the focus and I wanted to be out of my gym,” Figueiredo said. “But I wanted to be with Cejudo and Eric [Albarracin] because he’s the champion and he made the champion. Lions walk with lions.”
Deiveson Figueiredo was already an extremely dangerous flyweight, and we can’t wait to see how he evolves in Arizona alongside Cejudo and Albarracin. He’ll need to level up because Moreno clearly did in their last bout. It’s a third fight that’s guaranteed fireworks, and if it takes an element of revenge to bring things to an even higher level, we’re here for it.