Deiveson Figueiredo at +442: How a Two-Time Champion Got Here

Deiveson Figueiredo is ranked ninth at bantamweight. Payton Talbott, his opponent in Saturday's co-main event at UFC 332, is ranked 11th. The betting market has the higher-ranked man at +442, which is about 18 percent once the bookmaker margin is taken out.

A two-time UFC champion as a four-to-one underdog to a man ranked below him looks like a story about one bad matchup. It is not. It is a story about two years of prices, and this one is not even the longest of them.

The price ladder

Here are Figueiredo's closing lines since he settled in at bantamweight, from our consensus of sportsbooks, with the result beside each one.

The turn is the Yan fight. Figueiredo was a favorite against Vera three months earlier, then he headlined Macau against a former champion and closed at +385. He has not been a favorite since. Six straight fights as the underdog, five of them at +385 or longer.

And the market has mostly been right about him. He lost four of the five that have happened. The one real upset was Montel Jackson, where he won a split decision as a +268 underdog.

How the champion got here

Photo: Show Me The Money / CC BY 3.0

It is worth remembering what he was. Figueiredo won the flyweight title by submitting Joseph Benavidez in the first round in July 2020, then defended it by submitting Alex Perez in 1:57 at UFC 255. Three weeks later he fought Brandon Moreno to a majority draw at UFC 256. He lost the belt to Moreno at UFC 263, won it back from him at UFC 270, and lost it for good in their fourth fight at UFC 283, stopped by the doctor after the third round.

Then he moved up. His first three bantamweight fights were wins over Rob Font, Cody Garbrandt by second-round submission at UFC 300, and Vera. That run is why he got Yan in a main event. Since then he is 1-4, and the division has been sorting him the way it sorts everybody: by who he can still beat.

He is 25-7-1 as a pro and 14-7-1 in the UFC, and at bantamweight he is now 4-4. On Saturday he will be 38. Talbott will be 28.

Why +442 and not +872

The Umar Nurmagomedov price was the low point, and it tells you something. The market thought Figueiredo had less than a 10 percent chance. He went the distance and lost a decision. Against Song in May, at +430, he was submitted in the second round at 4:42.

Talbott is a different kind of problem. He is 11-1, 5-1 in the UFC, and his last fight was a unanimous decision over Henry Cejudo at UFC 323. He lands 5.87 significant strikes a minute in the UFC. Figueiredo lands 2.57 and absorbs 3.43. Talbott absorbs 3.00. On the numbers that describe a kickboxing match, the gap is wide.

The one number that cuts the other way is on the mat. Figueiredo averages 1.61 takedowns per 15 minutes in the UFC and 1.2 submission attempts, and he finished Benavidez, Perez and Garbrandt with submissions. Talbott stops 72 percent of the takedowns tried on him. That leaves 28 percent, which is not nothing against a man who needs one good scramble.

Our model, which never sees a betting line, has Figueiredo at 20.0 percent. That is slightly more generous than the market, not less. The biggest reason it gives against him is age, and the second is the striking output gap above. The fans on our pick'em are the most generous of all: 5 of the 19 who have picked this fight took Figueiredo, about 26 percent.

The number that matters

Here is the uncomfortable part. Every source we have, the market, the model and the fans, has him somewhere between 17 and 27 percent. Nobody is saying this is a fair fight. The disagreement is only about how unfair.

That is what two years of +400 does to a former champion. The market stopped asking whether he can win a while ago, and started asking how often. On Saturday he gets another chance to answer the same way he did against Montel Jackson.

Every time he has been +400 or longer at bantamweight, three times now, he has lost. The one upset came at +268.