Deiveson Figueiredo’s first title defense in the UFC was a quick and successful one.
At UFC 255 last Saturday, UFC flyweight champion Figueiredo submitted Alex Perez with a guillotine choke at 1:57 of the very first round. Early on, Figueiredo and Perez exchanged hard significant strikes on the feet. When Perez caught a Figueiredo kick, the champion pulled for a leg submission. When Perez tried to pounce on his downed opponent, he rolled right into Figueiredo’s guard and was swiftly choked out.
In his first title defense, Figueiredo extended his winning streak to five straight victories. Over the span of his 10 UFC fights, seven out of those ten resulted in a finish, including a title-clinching submission on former champion Joseph Benavidez in a match for the vacant belt on July 19th. With this loss, Perez had his three-fight winning streak broke. His only other promotional loss came to four-time UFC title holder Benavidez in November 2018.
Perez was not Figueiredo’s original scheduled opponent. Figueiredo was booked to fight former UFC bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt. However, Garbrandt pulled out of the fight in October due to health issues.
During this fight card, there was a number one contender match for who is going to face Figueiredo next for the Flyweight belt. In this preliminary fight, Brandon Moreno continued to succeed in the organization, but in an unusual fashion. This action-packed fight between Moreno & Brandon Royval ended after Royval suffered a shoulder injury in the closing seconds of Round 1. The fight was stopped just before the first round ended at the 4:59 mark when Royval was in excruciating pain after his shoulder popped out of his socket. He stopped defending himself from Moreno’s ground-and-pound which resulted in the referee stopping the fight.
Prior to his win, Moreno walked up to the cameras while in the cage still and continued to say “I want my belt.” With this victory Moreno was able to get his shot at the title and will be fighting Figueiredo in the main event at UFC 256 on Dec. 12.