Fighter Profile: Diego Lopes

Background

Brazilian featherweight based in Mexico, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt with a professional record of 28-8. He is ranked second in the UFC featherweight division.

Career timeline

• Joined the UFC in 2023 on short notice and built a rapid run of finishes to reach title contention.
• Lost to Alexander Volkanovski for the vacant featherweight title at UFC 314 in April 2025 by unanimous decision.
• Lost the rematch at UFC 325 in Sydney on 1 February 2026, again by unanimous decision.
• Bounced back at UFC Freedom 250 on 14 June 2026, stopping Steve Garcia by TKO at 2:42 of round two on the White House card.

Fight craft

Lopes is an aggressive, high-risk finisher: he throws in heavy bursts, hunts submissions from unusual entries, and creates chaos that most opponents handle badly. Against Volkanovski twice, that chaos was the problem — a disciplined champion who would not be drawn into scrambles gave him nothing to work with, and Lopes could not manufacture a route to the mat. Against everyone else in the division his willingness to gamble has been decisive, as the Garcia knockout showed.

In the modern MMA landscape

Our wider MMA analysis describes Lopes as a “Brazilian submission specialist” outpointed twice by Volkanovski, which is accurate, but the report stops there. He rebounded at the White House card with a second-round knockout of Steve Garcia and remains the division’s second-ranked contender.

Return to What the Modern MMA Game Demands.

Sources

• UFC — Diego Lopes athlete page
• Wikipedia — Diego Lopes (fighter)
• UFC 325: Volkanovski vs Lopes 2 — main card results

Record and competitive status checked 1 August 2026.