Charles Oliveira has a pitch for the UFC: beat Diego Lopes on Dec. 12, then hand him the next lightweight title shot ahead of the man who beat him two years ago.
Oliveira defends the BMF title against Lopes in the main event of UFC 335. Speaking to MMA Fighting, he made it clear he sees that fight as the final step before a crack at the 155-pound belt, regardless of who’s holding it.
“If I win this fight, I would definitely be next in line, regardless of whether Gaethje comes back or not, because that would be a very big fight that sells really well,” Oliveira said.
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The obvious problem is Arman Tsarukyan. The Armenian holds a split-decision win over Oliveira from 2024 and just knocked out Mauricio Ruffy in the first round to make his own case. Oliveira doesn’t dispute that Tsarukyan is in the title picture. He just thinks the box office favors him.
“I think I sell a lot more than Arman. So I could move ahead of Arman,” he said.
He also made a timing argument in comments relayed by Brazilian reporter Laerte Viana and shared on X by Championship Rounds. Tsarukyan fought earlier, Oliveira fights in December, and when the UFC sits down to book the first quarter of the year, he figures recency wins. “My fight will be fresher in people’s minds when they’re looking for someone to fight at the beginning of the year,” Oliveira said.
The Gaethje Problem
The champion is the wild card. Justin Gaethje stopped Ilia Topuria in June on the White House lawn to unify the lightweight titles, then said he wouldn’t fight again before the end of the year and opened the door to retiring as champion after 33 professional fights.
Oliveira, who submitted Gaethje in 2022, thinks the money conversation is going to be awkward. In his view, Gaethje simply can’t top that payday. “I think that, without a doubt, he is not going to make more money in his next fight than he made at the White House,” he said, adding that fighters who “were making 100 before were making 500 to fight at that card.”
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He was gracious about the retirement question, saying it’s Gaethje’s call alone and that the champ gets a standing ovation either way. But he also wants an answer. If Gaethje walks, Oliveira said, it would be him and Tsarukyan for the vacant belt. If Gaethje stays, Oliveira still thinks he’s the guy who should be across from him.
Lopes, for his part, is the guy everyone’s skipping past in this conversation, which is a dangerous habit. Oliveira at least acknowledged it, predicting the matchup “will certainly be explosive.”
The rest of UFC 335 is filling in around them, with Maycee Barber (15-3) facing Carli Judice (7-2) and Junior Tafa (7-6) meeting Contender Series signee Quentin Pasley (4-0).
My take: Oliveira is right about the business and wrong about the scorecard. Tsarukyan has the head-to-head win and a fresh first-round knockout, and “I sell more” has never once been an argument the guy on the other end of it found convincing. Still, I’d rather hear a former champ say exactly what he thinks than another round of vague emoji posts, and if he finishes Lopes in December, the UFC will listen to him. They usually do when the numbers back it up.
