RIO DE JANEIRO \u2014 Jhonata Diniz wants to follow up the thrill of a UFC Rio victory over Mario Pinto this Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with the excitement of skydiving Sunday.<\/p>\n
Diniz pulled a stunt prior to his most recent UFC win over Alvin Hines in June, a fist-fight in a hot air balloon 5,000 feet in the clouds. He promised something 10 times more exciting to celebrate that victory, but he wasn\u2019t able to get the plan off the paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had some plans going on,\u201d Diniz told MMA Fighting during the UFC Rio media day. \u201cI won\u2019t give away any spoilers for now, but there are some cool things in the project. This team that is working with me is bringing some ideas for a long time now, so stay tuned because it\u2019s going to be really cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf all goes right \u2014 and it will \u2014 and I come out with the win this weekend, we\u2019ll be landing on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. I\u2019ll be thrown off a plane to celebrate this victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
A kickboxing veteran who has now won three times in four UFC appearances plus one Contender Series finish, Diniz looks at radical sports as a way to relax and step away from martial arts for a moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s an addiction, but it\u2019s definitely a dependence,\u201d Diniz said. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve always had in my life, this pursue for adrenaline. I really like snowboarding, kitesurfing, wakeboarding. I like any sport that is not the norm because that way I can escape a little bit from the fight world. I can be present 100 percent and not think about fights. It\u2019s my escape. I think it\u2019s more than an addiction or anything like that, it\u2019s therapy for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diniz made the transition from kickboxing to MMA in 2022, after competing with the likes of Rico Verhoeven in GLORY, and is now looking to win two in a row since his first his first MMA loss to Marcin Tybura in November 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy fight with Tybura was a great lesson for me,\u201d Diniz said. \u201cI\u2019ve evolved a lot since that fight. I understood I can\u2019t focus only on training one aspect. Now we train MMA as a whole. I\u2019ve been trying to evolve in all areas of the game. Grappling is one of the areas I only started training recently so I need to pay more attention to that. I really feel like a real MMA fighter now. Not that long ago I was just a striker trying myself out with small gloves, but now I really feel like a MMA fighter ready to fight anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIO DE JANEIRO \u2014 Jhonata Diniz wants to follow up the thrill of a UFC Rio victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-206319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206319","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=206319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}