Cody Garbrandt Blasts Weight ‘Bully’ Deiveson Figueiredo, Predicts UFC 300 Fight

Garbrandt takes shots at Figueiredo after the former champ called him ‘mentally fragile’.

Author:
Christopher De Santiago
Apr 09, 2024

Things are heating up between Cody Garbrandt and Deiveson Figueiredo.

The former UFC Champions were scheduled to settle their differences four years ago in a flyweight title fight at UFC 255, but it didn’t go according to plan as Garbrandt withdrew due to an injury.

Figueiredo will now face off with Garbrandt in the first fight of the night on the stacked UFC 300 undercard. Ahead of his second appearance at bantamweight, Figueiredo plans to break what he thinks should be a compromised Garbrandt inside the Octagon.

“We see he’s mentally fragile. He doesn’t have a good head,” Figueiredo recently said on MMA Fighting Podcast, ‘Trocação Franca’. “We see he hasn’t come back after having a few losses, right? Every athlete fears getting touched. Many fighters like the in-fight but crumble when a hand lands. You have to be a badass, you need a strong mind to come back again. I think I’ll affect his mind by touching him, and he’s going to respect me more.”

As for criticism of his mentality, ‘No Love’ thinks that’s rich coming from Figueiredo since the former champ infamously failed to make weight for his first title fight vs. Joe Benavidez in 2020.

“He thinks I'm mentally weak or whatever. I don't know how it translated from Portuguese, but that right there, he gave up on himself,” Garbrandt told Kevin Iole, referencing Figueiredo’s previous weight miss. “He gave up. He didn't even have someone that was trying to break him down and put an elbow through his skull. It was, he gave up on himself…

“You have to believe in yourself, that's the main thing he's able to push and he's missed weight a few times. So I feel like he was just an oversized bantamweight suffering to bully flyweights.”

Garbrandt decided to test the waters at flyweight before, losing by TKO to Kai Kara-France in his lone appearance at the weight class in 2021.

“I’ve done the flyweight [cut] before,” Garbrandt reflected. “Weight was easy, made it like a champ, but I just didn't feel good there at that weight. This is my weight. I like to eat, I like to lift all camp. I don't take any of my skill work back, but seeing [Figueiredo] at 35’ was good."

After losing his flyweight title to Brandon Moreno in a rare tetralogy fight, Figueiredo moved up to the bantamweight division, defeating top contender Rob Font by decision at UFC Austin in December 2023.

Garbrandt assesses Figueiredo’s performance, what went wrong for his former foe Font along with what a win over the former flyweight destroyer would do for him at 135lbs.

“I think that the fight with Rob, like I said, got a lot of love and respect to Rob in the New England Cartel, but I just don't think that Rob posed enough threats to [Figueiredo], he kept it standing. Didn't really diversify the martial arts to really tax Deiveson’s cardio. Deiveson kind of sat back and let Rob fight at his pace. I think that's something that Deiveson is gonna try to do. He's not a volume striker, he doesn't really move too much side to side, straight back and forth.

“I like that fight for me a lot,” Garbrandt said of the Figueiredo matchup. “First and foremost for us, be able to fight four years prior, not happening, but now he's at bantamweight and he's #8 in the division, puts me right back there. I'm gonna finish him and it's gonna be an exciting fight until it's not. Until I put the lights out or I choke him out until he just gives up on himself. So, that's what I'm excited to do in a week's time.”

Cody Garbrandt vs. Deiveson Figueiredo kicks off UFC 300 this Saturday.

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