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“His soul wasn’t in his body anymore. And then I took what was left and closed the casket.”
Deiveson Figueiredo put a beating on Joseph Benavidez at the weekend, dropping the MMA veteran several times before choking him unconscious in the UFC Fight Night 172 main event at Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.
Figueiredo put such a beating on Benavidez in the first round that he could have sworn he saw the No. 2-ranked flyweight’s soul leave his body after he dropped him the third time.
“I knew that when I got the first knockdown he’d lose conscience of what was happening inside the cage and I’d be able to do whatever I wanted with him,” Figueiredo said of Benavidez in a post-fight interview with MMA Fighting. “And it happened. I knocked him down three times. His soul wasn’t in his body anymore. And then I took what was left and closed the casket.”
Figueiredo dismantled and submitted Benavidez to capture the vacant UFC flyweight title and will likely surge into the UFC’s top-fifteen pound-for-pound rankings after the UFC updates its website in the coming days.