Diego Lopes is aiming to fight and play cornerman in two weeks when he travels to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the promotion’s long-awaited debut at The Sphere for Noche UFC.
Fight fans have seen Lopes rise the featherweight ranks over the past two years and he’s nearing the top of the weight class. Lopes was expected to fight Brian Ortega at UFC 303 this past June, but “T-City” pulled out of his fight with hours to spare and was replaced by Dan Ige. The switch didn’t effect Lopes as the Brazilian contender earned a unanimous decision win to push his UFC record to 4-1.
Lopes is now scheduled to fight Ortega again at Noche UFC in two weeks from inside The Sphere in “Sin City.” It’s a massive fight for both men, but if Lopes wins he should be fast tracked to his first UFC featherweight title shot. The only problem — outside of defeating one of the toughest featherweights on the planet in Ortega — is the fact that Lopes also wants to corner teammate and current UFC women’s flyweight champion, Alexa Grasso, who defends her title on the same night in a trilogy fight with Valentina Shevchenko.
As of now, the plan for Lopes is to finish his fight against Ortega in shot time in order to help Grasso for her title fight. It may be cutting it close, but Lopes has been in Grasso’s corner since she moved down to 125 pounds back in 2020.
“We have talked about this a lot, how we’re going to handle this, because I’ve been in her corner ever since she moved to 125 [pounds],” Lopes told MMA Fighting. “We work together, we help each other, I teach her and learn from her, but we have no idea what we’re going to do. I’ll fight my fight, and then comes Alexa. We know how we come out of a fight, especially knowing how tough Ortega is. It could be a war and we both might come out bad. [Laughs.] But I’m focused. It’s extra motivation to come out fine in this fight, to win quickly and rush to the locker room, change clothes and be in Alexa’s corner.”