UFC Fight Night 148: Thompson vs. Pettis - Predictions and Picks

#4 Deiveson Figueiredo vs. Jussier Formiga

Deiveson Figueiredo is 4-0 in the UFC right now and has looked excellent

Under regular circumstances – as in, no rumors about the death of the division swirling around – you’d probably have said this would be a fight to decide the next top contender at Flyweight. Formiga – once considered the world’s top Flyweight in the days before the UFC promoted the division – is on a 3-fight winning streak, has finally started to finish more fights, and he had a close match with champion Henry Cejudo back in 2015.

His countryman Figueiredo meanwhile is perfect at 15-0 and put a real beatdown on former title contender John Moraga back in August, taking the tough wrestler out with a series of brutal strikes in the second round. That was his 4th UFC win, and he’s only gone the distance twice in his career – once in the UFC with Jarred Brooks in what was clearly his toughest fight to date.

For me, this should come down to whether Jussier Formiga can weather what is likely to be a pretty nasty storm from ‘Deus Da Guerra’ – a scary nickname which translates to ‘God of War’ – and get him to the ground, preferably where he can take the back and look for a choke. There aren’t many fighters in the whole sport better at capitalizing on a dominant position from the back than Formiga, after all.

Unfortunately, Formiga just isn’t an A+ athlete, and that’s what has me worried for him when it comes to this fight. Against John Dodson for instance in his UFC debut, Formiga was simply outgunned – he couldn’t get close to the quicker, more explosive Dodson, ate a ton of nasty strikes and got knocked out violently. The same thing happened when he fought Joseph Benavidez, and while he did better with Cejudo, that was a highly inexperienced version of the current champion who wasn’t that comfortable striking.

Essentially Sergio Pettis was probably the first really great athlete that Formiga was able to beat in his UFC tenure, and Pettis infamously tends to fight in spurts and is somewhat inconsistent. Figueiredo meanwhile is a violent, explosive striker who chains combinations together and is technically outstanding, too. The way he destroyed Moraga by setting him up with shots to the body was beautiful.

Figueiredo is wildly unproven on the ground in the UFC, largely because he hasn’t really needed to go there, but he didn’t look terrible there when he was taken down by a strong wrestler in Jarred Brooks. Granted Brooks isn’t anywhere near as skilled as Formiga on the ground, but even then I suspect Figueiredo could explode his way out of a lot of things – as long as he doesn’t give Formiga his back of course.

I’m going with Figueiredo here; I just think he’s too explosive and aggressive on the feet for Formiga to handle and I’m not sure that Formiga will be able to take him down. Even if he does get him down, realistically the only way he’s going to put ‘Deus Da Guerra’ away is by taking his back, and assuming Figueiredo doesn’t allow that to happen, then for me, this is his fight to lose.

The Pick: Figueiredo via second round KO