Diego Lopes, champ Alexa Grasso’s jiu-jitsu coach, is still hopeful of a UFC call despite a 2021 setback on Dana White’s Contender Series.
[autotag]Diego Lopes[/autotag] is not ready to give up on his dream.
The former LUX champion and jiu-jitsu coach of Alexa Grasso is still hoping to get the opportunity to fight in the world’s biggest MMA stage – the UFC. Lopes (20-5), along with Lobo Gym head coach Francisco Grasso, has helped Alexa become UFC champion, Irene Aldana develop into a UFC title contender, and Alessandro Costa get to the UFC stage.
He thinks it’s time he joins his partners and students in the octagon.
“For one reason or the other, it hasn’t happened. But we’re still working, and we’re taking whatever opportunities we get. We’ve evolved a ton in the striking area and continued to improve a lot on the ground. I think it’s time I show what I’m made of. Whatever fights I do from here on, I’m coming in to finish. I’m focused on that and hoping to get good opportunities so we can make the most of them.”
Lopes said he expects to fight in April at a Fury FC event, but has yet to get confirmation of an opponent. The Brazilian, who now lives in Mexico, did get a chance at the big stage in 2021 when he took a short-notice Dana White’s Contender Series fight, but lost a technical decision to Joanderson Brito. The defeat snapped a 7-0 run for Lopes, which included wins over former UFC fighters Masio Fullen, Marco Beltran and Rony Jason.
Lopes has picked up momentum once again, and is on a two-fight winning streak. He’s open to short-notice calls at featherweight or lightweight and wants to prove he’s improved since he fought on DWCS.
“Of course I’ll do that at 155 or 145,” Lopes said. “I’m ready to fight, and I haven’t stopped training since my last fight. I’ve stayed ready because my objective is to get to the UFC and ready for any challenge that gets put in front of me.
“If I get the chance to fight in the UFC, you’ll see a completely different fighter than the one you saw in the Contender Series. My goal is clear, and that’s to get to the UFC and go for all the bonuses. That’s what I want. I want to show that I can give good fights in the company and keep climbing up the ranks.”
Alexa Grasso and her team sure did their homework before choking out Valentina Shevchenko for UFC gold.
[autotag]Alexa Grasso[/autotag] is not a UFC champion by coincidence.
Many dismissed Grasso’s chances of dethroning all-time great Valentina Shevchenko entering this past Saturday’s UFC 285, and even after beating her to become the first person to finish Shevchenko, some are still not ready to give Grasso her due. At a quick glance, some see Grasso’s historic upset win over Shevchencko as a sign of luck, a costly mistake by Shevchenko, or maybe even just as one of the rare but reoccurring wild cards the MMA Gods deal out from time to time.
Well, Grasso’s jiu-jitsu coach at Lobo Gym in Guadalajara, Mexico, [autotag]Diego Lopes[/autotag], also a current MMA fighter, guarantees that there’s more than meets the eye.
Grasso’s quick back take and lock of the rear-naked choke in response to Shevchenko’s spinning kick was something. Like many other successful attacks from Grasso that night, that was carefully planned out – and there’s proof of it.
“We could say that easily hundreds, actually thousands of times,” Lopes told MMA Junkie in Spanish when asked about how much Grasso trained the counter-attack seen at UFC 285. “It was a long time, and I’m telling you: We’d go over that every day – day and night.
“We were there reviewing it before hard training, after hard training, we’d always go over the same thing. Alexa has always had good jiu-jitsu. It was just about working specific details.”
Alexa Grasso drilling the counter to Valentina Shevchevko’s spinning kick in the lock room at #UFC285.
[autotag]Francisco Grasso[/autotag], Alexa’s uncle and head coach, recognized the opening and brought it to Lopes’ attention after going over hours of footage on Shevchenko. They knew there had to be something that they could exploit in the fight – even from a world-class champion – and fortunately for them, they found a dent in the armor.
“In all her fights, she’s thrown spinning kicks,” Lopes said. “The master mind behind all of this has been Pancho (Francisco Grasso). He’s always days and night, even in early hours of the morning – sometimes doesn’t even sleep, analyzing every detail, every second of the fight to give us the best material for us to work with.
“It’s been a team effort, but the main credit goes to Pancho. He’s the one that saw that opening and that opportunity. He simply brought this to my attention and said, ‘Look, brother, I see this opportunity. What can we do here? What can we work with?’ And with that in mind, that’s when I contributed with my grain of sand to Pancho’s idea.
“This was the result. We waited for the opportunity and got it. As you mentioned, there’s the video. There’s the evidence. There’s no discussion. That’s what we did the whole camp. And it’s not just this, like that video, we have many other key things that we have video of in camp that happened in the fight. We knew it was going to happen. It was a team effort, but specially our coach Francisco Grasso, who saw the opening.”
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But perhaps the most wild thing about all this, is not that Shevchenko no longer sits at the top of the UFC women’s flyweight division, but it’s actually realizing how long Grasso’s win was in the making.
The real work didn’t start months ago when Grasso and her team received a contract to fight Shevchenko in a five-round contest. They’ve actually been scouting Shevchenko well before they were in title contention.
“We started working on this ever since Alexa began taking off at 125 pounds,” Lopes explained. “After she beat Ji Yeon Kim and Macycee Barber (in 2021), we knew we could be fighting Valentina in the future, and since then, we’ve been preparing for this moment.
“People always looked at Valentina the way that she wants to be seen. But when we stopped to analyze every detail, every second of her fights, every opening that we could have, that’s when we said, ‘Hey, this is a fighter who we can beat. She’s not the seven-head monster that people are saying.’ We’ve been putting together a game plan for a long time. Obviously we’ve had a four-month camp, but that was just polishing up.”
Lopes assures that Shevchenko has been a point of discussion for many years inside the walls of Lobo Gym. Nothing personal, Shevchenko just happened to stay champion, and a UFC title at 125 pound is what they were after.
“Oh, yeah, a while,” Lopes responded when pressed about how far back they’ve been studying Shevchenko. “If you enter the rankings, and you’re not thinking about the title, then what are you doing there? If you don’t want to fight for the title, if you don’t want to face the champion, then why do you work to be in the rankings?
“The objective with Alexa was clear. In every fight you could see her evolving. The goal has always been the title, regardless of who was champion. It just so happen to be that fight after fight, Valentina stayed champion, so every time we won, we’d sit down and analyze Valentina’s fights knowing that the opportunity may one day come.”
Alexa Grasso is carried in the ring after defeating Valentina Shevchenko in a UFC 285 mixed martial arts flyweight title bout Saturday, March 4, 2023, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker) ORG XMIT: NVDB118
That night in Las Vegas at T-Mobile Arena, Grasso did more than just win a UFC title and become the first person to finish Shevchenko in her 20-year-career. She also made history for her country as the first Mexico-born woman to challenge and win a UFC championship belt.
Lopes is proud to have contributed to Grasso’s incredible feat and feels this win validates the work that’s being done by everyone at Lobo Gym.
“For me, it meant so much,” Lopes said. “It meant that every training session, everything, resulted in what we got that night. It filled me with pride. It filled me with emotion.
“We were against the world. Everyone was saying that it wasn’t possible, that Valentina was going to win. As you said, Alexa and I are friends apart from training partners, so it’s that, me being her trainer and friend and seeing how much she’s sacrificed to be where she’s at. She’s sacrificed so much of her life to be at this moment. The merit goes to her, the team, her uncle and coach Francisco Grasso.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 285.
Despite the abrupt ending to his fight with Diego Lopes, Joanderson Brito wasn’t worried about getting disqualified.
LAS VEGAS – Despite the abrupt ending to his fight with [autotag]Diego Lopes[/autotag], [autotag]Joanderson Brito[/autotag] wasn’t afraid of getting disqualified.
Brito’s fight with Lopes at Dana White’s Contender Series 37 on Tuesday was ruled a technical decision in his favor after he committed an eye poke in the third round, which rendered Lopes unable to continue. A point was taken from Brito, but he won the fight 29-28 on all three judges’ scorecards.
Though Brito (9-0) would have liked to see the entire fight through, he was pleased with his performance leading up to that point.
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“Surely disappointed at the way it ended,” Brito said at the post-fight news conference. “But when push comes to shove, I feel that I won the first round and that I would have won the second round.”
He continued, “I didn’t think it was in jeopardy because they came back to talk to me and talked to us back in the locker room, explained the rules in saying that if you are winning the fight and we’re talking first and second rounds here, and the outcome is because of an accidental infraction, that you shouldn’t be in jeopardy. Obviously it wasn’t ideal, but I didn’t think I was going to be disqualified because of that understanding.”
Brito was one of five fighters to earn a UFC deal on the night after extending his winning streak to 11.
“I wanted the fight to be very active, and I think it was,” Brito said. “It was a lot of movement and people want to see combat, people want to see fights, and I do feel that we were able to put that show on, so I’m very confident about that.”
An explanation of the rules was called for after a confusing situation at Dana White’s Contender Series on Tuesday.
Even though the Unified Rules of MMA are printed in black and white, confusing situations present themselves from time to time.
On Tuesday evening at Dana White’s Contender Series 37, [autotag]Joanderson Brito[/autotag] committed an eye poke in the third round that rendered his opponent, [autotag]Diego Lopes[/autotag], unable to continue. However, when it was all said and done, Brito was declared the winner of the contest via technical decision.
Brito was warned on more than one occasion by referee Chris Tognoni throughout the fight to stop poking his opponent and to keep his fingers straight up or his fist closed completely. A point was taken from Brito after Lopes was determined to be unable to continue in the third round, but why was a point taken after the fight was already called off? More importantly, why was Brito declared victorious after essentially fouling his way to a win?
This is where the rules of the technical decision come into play. If a fight enters the third round or later and is stopped by an unintentional foul, the incomplete round will be scored as if it were completed, and the fight will go to the scorecards. If the referee decides to take a point, they may do so before the scores are tallied.
The keyword here is “unintentional” because if the foul was deemed intentional, the result would be a disqualification. Also, if the situation occurred before the completion of the second round, the fight would be declared a no-contest for an unintentional foul.
This is the exact process that played out on Tuesday. Tognoni decided the foul was unintentional, and despite the point deduction, Brito earned the judges’ favor and therefore won the bout with unanimous scores of 29-28.
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The other area of frequent confusion that occurred during this ordeal was the rule around recovery time for a fouled fighter.
The Unified Rules of MMA read as follows: “A fighter who has been struck with a low blow is allowed up to five minutes to recover from the foul as long as in the ringside doctor’s opinion the fighter may possibly continue on in the contest.”
For fouls other than low blows, the rule reads: “For a foul other than a low blow, the fouled fighter is not guaranteed 5 minutes of recovery time. If deemed not fit to continue by the referee or ringside physician, the referee must immediately call a halt to the bout. If the fighter is deemed not fit to continue by the referee or ringside physician but some of the five-minute foul time is still remaining, the fighter cannot avail himself of the remaining time.”
The UFC broadcast puts a clock on the screen for any foul that occurs. This can create some confusion even if the viewer may be aware of, but not completely understand, the five-minute rule and how it applies to different fouls.
In this case, the on-screen clock reached 2:09 before being taken off the screen, and the referee called a stop to the contest about 20 seconds later. This was the correct process based on the rules. Tognoni, in conjunction with the ringside physician, decided Lopes could not continue within five minutes, which is the allotted time they have to make a determination.
While everything in this fight was handled by the book, it still doesn’t alleviate the bitter taste of a fighter fouling his opponent until he is unable to continue and still walking away with his hand raised in victory. Again, this would have not occurred if Tognoni determined the final eye poke to be intentional. If he did, a situation similar to that of Petr Yan vs. Aljamain Sterling would have unfolded, where the fouled fighter was declared the winner by disqualification for being on the receiving end of an intentional illegal strike.
MMA rules are always a hot topic of discussion when arguing for or against certain techniques such as 12-6 elbows or soccer kicks. Perhaps a closer examination of the situation that unfolded on Tuesday is in order.
