A top featherweight contender is willing to fight Charles Oliveira in the upcoming UFC Rio main event for his lightweight debut.<\/p>\n
Former UFC champion Charles Oliveira opted for a relatively fast turnaround at UFC Rio after a brutal knockout loss to Ilia Topuria at UFC 317. Despite public protests from Daniel Cormier and others worried<\/a> about Oliveira\u2019s health, Oliveira refused to turn down the opportunity to headline in his home country.<\/p>\n But Oliveira\u2019s upcoming headliner remains in flux after Rafael Fiziev withdrew due to injury. Several fellow lightweights, including Mateusz Gamrot, are in the mix to potentially co-headline opposite Oliveira.<\/p>\n In addition to Oliveira\u2019s lightweight colleagues, a rising featherweight star is open to stepping up on weeks\u2019 notice to fight the former UFC lightweight king.<\/p>\n Diego Lopes open to a quick turnaround to fight Charles Oliveira in UFC lightweight debut<\/p>\n In a recent interview with Brazilian journalist Laerte Viana<\/a>, featherweight Diego Lopes was pressed on potentially saving the upcoming UFC Rio card.<\/p>\n \u201cSure. Why not?\u201d Lopes answered. \u201cOf course, I\u2019d do it, especially because Charles is a legend of the sport in Brazil. I\u2019ll never turn down any fight. If the UFC thinks I\u2019m the guy to fight him and calls me, definitely [yes]. I wouldn\u2019t think twice.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just won a fight, and we\u2019re in a good position to fight for the belt, so I wouldn\u2019t ask for that,\u201d Lopes said. \u201cI\u2019ve talked to my manager, we want the [featherweight] belt. But if the UFC calls us like, \u2018We need you,\u2019 of course, let\u2019s go, no problem at all.\u201d (h\/t MMA Fighting<\/a>)<\/p>\n Lopes most recently handed Jean Silva his first Octagon defeat at Noche UFC earlier this month. He bounced back following a vacant featherweight title loss to Alexander Volkanovski earlier this year at UFC 314.<\/p>\n UFC Rio marks Oliveira\u2019s first fight in Brazil since squaring off against Kevin Lee in a March 2020 UFC Fight Night headliner. The card marked the UFC\u2019s first closed-door show during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A top featherweight contender is willing to fight Charles Oliveira in the upcoming UFC Rio main event for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,17500,44864,786,785,85,787],"class_list":["post-163219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-charles-oliveira","tag-diego-lopes","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}