Deiveson Figueiredo to Remain at 125 Pounds, Faces Manel Kape at UFC 290

Former Ultimate Fighting Championship flyweight king
Deiveson
Figueiredo is not quite so eager to leave his old stomping
ground just yet.

Ex-champ Figueiredo (21-3-1) lost his title in his tetralogy match
with Brandon
Moreno at UFC 283 in January. and subsequently suggested he was
planning on moving to bantamweight going forward. Those plans for
the 35-year-old are currently on hold, as instead, he will be
staying at flyweight to take on Manel Kape
(18-6) this July. Per ESPN
Deportes on Thursday, Figueiredo and Kape will battle it out at
UFC
290, which is set to go down in the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas
on July 8.

This will be Figueiredo’s first opponent not named Moreno in over
two and a half years – spanning the entirety of his upcoming foe’s
UFC tenure thus far. The Brazilian embarked on the UFC’s first
quadrilogy series when he first met Moreno at UFC 256 in 2020, and
then encountered him three more times in 2021, 2022 and 2023. The
fourth match for all the proverbial marbles did not go his way, as
the doctors halted the match at the end of Round 3 due to damage
suffered on his eye. Figueiredo ended the series at 1-2-1, and has
since stated that he now plans on taking three more bouts at
flyweight before changing weight categories.

Since starting his UFC run off at 0-2 with two contentious decision
defeats to top contenders Alexandre
Pantoja and Matheus
Nicolau, “Starboy” has rattled off three straight wins. A pair
of knockouts over Ode
Osbourne and Zhalgas
Zhumagulov led to a meeting with David
Dvorak in December, which resulted in Kape’s first decision
victory since July 2013. Both men celebrate stellar finish rates,
with Figueiredo’s 81% surpassed by Kape’s 89%.

UFC 290 will take place in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena at the
end of the UFC’s annual International Fight Week. The headliner has
not yet been made official, but a pair of championship tilts stack
the limited July 8 lineup so far. Alexander
Volkanovski will drop back down to featherweight to defend his
145-pound throne against interim beltholder Yair
Rodriguez, while Moreno will attempt to make the first defense
of his flyweight crown in a rematch with Pantoja. The only other
bout announced thus far is a middleweight scrap pitting Bo Nickal
against Tresean
Gore.