This weekend, during UFC 332, it was announced that December’s UFC 335 would be headlined by Charles Oliveira vs. Diego Lopes for Oliveira’s BMF title. This will be Lopes’ lightweight debut with the promotion, having contended for the featherweight title on two occasions.
Lopes talked to Yahoo Sports about his move to 155 lbs and what fights were on the table for him once he left the featherweight division.
The Mexico-based Brazilian admitted that he had nowhere to go at featherweight, having lost twice to champion Alexander Volkanovski. And despite beating Steve Garcia at the UFC’s White House event in July, as a featherweight, Lopes still felt it was time to move up.
“We don’t have a lot of options at 145 now and I wanted to make the move for fun fights at 155,” he said.
The ‘fun fight’ Lopes was first offered, according to him, was with Dan Hooker in the main event of UFC Paris in September. I’m sure that would have been fun for Lopes, at least. That fight with Hooker, who is currently marred in a losing streak, went away after UFC cherry-picked Salahdine Parnasse from MVP MMA. Parnasse would go onto demolish Hooker at the Accor Arena.
After that, Lopes said, the offer to fight a Brazilian legend came in.
“They said Charles Oliveira. If it’s not possible, maybe [Benoit Saint Denis] in New York. So UFC did the fight with Oliveira, and I’m happy with this fight.”
Future Hall of Famer Oliveira won the BMF belt with a win over Max Holloway in March. He won that belt in decidedly un-BMF-like fashion, though, grounding Holloway and taking away the chance of a fun rock ‘em sock ‘em brawl.
Interestingly, this will be Oliveira’s first ever UFC fight against a fellow Brazilian. The last time the 37 UFC fight veteran faced a countryman was in 2010. Lopes doesn’t have a similar record. He won a memorable fight over Jean Silva in 2025 and also dropped a bout to Joanderson Brito on Contender Series.
Lopes said that this fight with Oliveira doesn’t mean he’ll never go back down to 145 lbs. I’m sure if Volkanovski loses to Movsar Evloev, he’ll find some motivation to try and get back in that title picture.