Diego Lopes was supposed to make his lightweight debut against Dan Hooker in Paris. Then the matchmaking changed, and he ended up with a BMF title fight against Charles Oliveira at UFC 335.
Lopes laid out the sequence Tuesday on The Ariel Helwani Show, and Helwani posted the clips on X. When his camp decided to move up to 155, Lopes said, the UFC came back with a few options, and Hooker in Paris was the first one on the table.
“At first, I was supposed to maybe fight Dan Hooker in Paris, but then the UFC signed [Salahdine Parnasse], so that fight didn’t happen,” Lopes said.
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With Paris off the board, Lopes said his side pitched Oliveira directly. Their fallback was Benoît Saint Denis in New York. The promotion went with the bigger name.
“The UFC made the Oliveira fight, so I’m happy with this fight,” he said.
Why 155, and why now
The move came down to a crowded-out featherweight picture with Lopes on the wrong side of it. He has lost twice to Alexander Volkanovski, and while he won his most recent fight at 145, he told Helwani the division doesn’t have much for him at the moment.
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“So we made the decision to move to 155 and take some fun fights,” Lopes said.
He didn’t call it permanent. Lopes said the lightweight cut, or the lack of one, lets him train differently. He mentioned supplements, creatine and heavier lifting, and said he wants to find out what his power looks like at the new weight before deciding whether to stay or head back down to featherweight after Oliveira.
Lopes also pushed back on critics who think he jumped the line into a BMF fight. His case is the fights themselves. He said he goes in, does his job and tries to put on a great fight whether he wins or loses, and he believes that’s why the UFC keeps handing him big spots.
“A couple of people say, ‘I don’t think Diego deserves to fight for the BMF.’ Ok, tell me another guy who deserves to fight for the BMF and can put on a great fight with Charles,” he said.
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He added that he’s only been in the UFC for about three to three and a half years and figures some of the noise is jealousy. He also said it isn’t his concern.
Sal’s take
The Hooker detail matters more than it looks. Hooker would have been a sensible first test at 155, a veteran who’d tell Lopes fast whether his chin and his gas tank traveled up a division. Oliveira is a different exam entirely. That’s a first lightweight fight against a man who finishes people, with a belt that exists mostly to reward chaos, and Lopes skipped the calibration round to get there. I respect the ambition. As a betting proposition, a guy debuting at a new weight against an elite finisher is exactly the kind of fight where I want to see the opening number before anyone tells me how fun it’s going to be. And Lopes leaving the door open to 145 tells you he’s treating this as an experiment, which is honest of him. My wallet has paid for enough experiments already. I’ll be watching how that line moves in the weeks before UFC 335.
