Preview: UFC 283 ‘Teixeira vs. Hill’

UFC Flyweight Championship

CHAMPION | Deiveson Figueiredo (21-2-1, 10-2-1 UFC)
vs. #1 FLW | Brandon Moreno (20-6-2, 8-3-2 UFC)

ODDS: Figueiredo (-110), Moreno (-110)

Figueiredo and Moreno land in unprecedented territory here, as the fates have conspired for the two to meet once again in the UFC’s first title tetralogy. In a way, it is a minor miracle that the first fight even happened. First, the UFC looked to shutter the entire division at one point—it even released Moreno in the process—until Henry Cejudo’s upset win over T.J. Dillashaw essentially forced the promotion to keep the weight class alive. Additionally, the first meeting between Figueiredo and Moreno was a hastily thrown-together booking born out of desperation. The UFC needed a main event title fight for its December 2020 pay-per-view with no apparent options, only to be saved when Figueiredo and Moreno each scored first-round wins and came out unscathed enough to meet for the title just three weeks later. The resulting fight was excellent enough that the pairing would be revisited at some point regardless, but this series easily could have been stopped before it even began. Figueiredo looked to be the better fighter and would have narrowly won the fight on the scorecards, but an inadvertent groin strike and subsequent point deduction in the third round turned the bout into a majority draw. So the rematch came in June 2021, the clear outlier of the series thus far but also the highlight from an emotional standpoint. Figueiredo entered in surprisingly flat form due to a difficult weight cut, so Moreno dominated him to a third-round submission, becoming the UFC’s first Mexican-born champion while seeming set to break out as a star. Alexandre Pantoja appeared poised to break things up as the next challenger until an injury took him out of the picture, so the UFC turned to the trilogy, which was another back-and-forth war, this time seeing Figueiredo regain the belt. A fourth fight in the series seemed to obviously be up next, and after a minor detour, that is where things have wound up. A Figueiredo injury led to Moreno winning an interim title against Kai Kara France to keep his place in line; now, he heads to Brazil for a Figueiredo home game.

With three different results coming out of three fights, obviously anything could happen in meeting number four, but this does feel like Figueiredo’s fight to lose. Again, the second bout is the clear outlier, almost entirely due to Figueiredo showing up in particularly poor form. Coming out of that fight, the sense was that Moreno had broken open the Figueiredo puzzle, but the third fight greatly shifted the narrative of how these two match up. Prior to the first encounter, Figueiredo was most notable for his ridiculously powerful and precise ability to finish his opponents. While most of his career had been marked by stretches of low output until Figueiredo suddenly closed the show, the first Moreno fight came off a stretch where the Brazilian kept quickly and decisively asserting his dominance. If nothing else, that first fight showed off Moreno’s ridiculous durability, as he ate all of Figueiredo’s offense and kept marching forward. Building off of that with the dominant win in the rematch, it is easy to form the narrative that Moreno’s toughness could see him through any sort of trouble and force Figueiredo to crumble. Then came the third fight, where Moreno seemed to lean on that fact over all else. While it was an excellent fight worthy of yet another rematch, it also hit the point of diminishing returns a bit. Figueiredo does seem to be losing some of his own durability through these wars of attrition, but Moreno also seemed to abandon some of his own defense and technical strategy in the name of trying to beat the Brazilian head-on. It is a testament to Moreno’s gifts that he survived 25 minutes against Figueiredo once again, but he left so much on the table for the Brazilian to land his own offense that he cost himself the decision as a result. Moreno’s win over France was a mixed bag that did not do much to assuage those particular concerns heading into this fight, so taken as a whole, it looks clear that—assuming both men come into this at near peak form—Figueiredo can keep pace enough with “The Assassin Baby” to prove himself as the more effective fighter over 25 minutes. Still, this could wind up as the third clash between these two to be worthy of “Fight of the Year” honors. The pick is Figueiredo via decision.

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Teixeira vs. Hill
Figueiredo vs. Moreno
Burns vs. Magny
Andrade vs. Murphy
Walker vs. Craig
The Prelims