Brandon Moreno is fresh off his UFC 283 title win over Deiveson Figueiredo and is happy to have the rivalry behind him. These two men have fought four times over the last two years and now the score is finally settled. Coming into the fight, Moreno was holding the interim title, now he is the proud owner of the undisputed UFC flyweight championship belt once again. Finally, Moreno can move on and defend his title against a new opponent, whoever that may be.
As for Figueiredo, he has the intention of moving up in weight and fighting in the bantamweight division.
Brandon Moreno is glad to put the pressure and stress of fighting Deiveson Figueiredo again behind him
Moreno admitted in an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour that his training camp for this fight was a tough one. He injured his knee prior to the fight and also had a bad case of the flu. The thing that took a toll on him was the pressure of this fourth fight with the same person. Never in the UFC have two men met four times in the Octagon.
“A lot of hard moments for this training camp, a lot of issues, a lot of pressure again, you know the stress, whatever. So right now I’m just trying to not to be focusing on other things than just my family, my daughters, and on my wife. So right now I’m here and spending time with them,” he said. “I raised a little bit in my mental health like this rivalry, all this history, all these two years, trying to fight with the same guy, fighting with the same guy was a lot of stress and my mind feels a little bit tired too.”
Now Morneo can finally move on and it seems that he will be facing Alexandre Pantoja in his first title defense. The two met up in Brazil following the UFC 283 main event and Moreno remembers being bothered a bit by the encounter. He said that Pantoja was pressuring him to set a date for their fight but Moreno had just walked out of the cage and had not given it much thought yet. He can admit that the fight will make sense to be his next bout but is not sure on when just yet. If he had it his way, he would like to fight in Mexico City on Independence day, Sept. 16.
