8-cent meals, bucket shower and Mexican dream: The improbable rise of Diego Lopes

He’s more than a Brazilian fighter with a different hairstyle, powerful punches and slick jiu-jitsu. Diego Lopes is the embodiment of the fighting spirit that drives people to overcome difficulties for a goal.

Dream, believe and make it happen.

This Saturday, Lopes enters Kaseya Center in Miami for UFC 314 representing both Brazil and Mexico, looking to claim a vacant featherweight title against legendary former champion Alexander Volkanovski. Lopes headlines a UFC pay-per-view for the first time, the pinnacle of a career filled of challenging ups and down, from Manaus to Puebla.

Manaus is famous for producing talented grapplers for over a century, from the Gracies incursion to the Amazon city to Wallid Ismail, to Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and the great Jose Aldo, with Lopes following those footsteps in the jiu-jitsu world. He was talented, but realized soon enough that jiu-jitsu tournaments, although exciting to be part of, wouldn’t put food on the table. Mixing the martial arts appeared to be the answer, and he made the move in September of 2012 with a second-round TKO victory.

Lopes wasted no time. Nine months later and his professional record already showed three stoppage victories in a small local promotion, but then came the losses. First, a split decision to Thiago Silva followed by a TKO stoppage to Rodrigo Praia. He felt the need to change in order to make it big in the sport, and Manaus didn’t feel big enough.

“I lost those fights back-to-back and that’s when I realized that’s what I wanted for my life,” Lopes tells MMA Fighting. “My brother [Thiago Freitas] was the first of the family to start fighting and he was also a great fighter, but he didn’t have much opportunities. When I saw that’s what I really wanted, I didn’t think twice about leaving Manaus and moving to Sao Paulo to get better on this path.”

Lopes landed in Sao Paulo and joined Revira Black Team to train. Coach Vinicius Reviravolta had a partnership with a school nearby that gave them a chance to eat and save some change that would make a difference. It wasn’t enough to pay rent either, so they slept in the gym.

That scenario later changed, when Reviravolta moved his gym from Lapa to “far away” in Perus, also in Sao Paulo. There was no place for Lopes and the other kids to sleep in the gym anymore, so they had to rent a place in the area.

“We did everything we could to pay the rent and food,” Lopes said. “But sometimes we had no money.”

Lopes and his friends learned about the Bom Prato restaurant, a state-owned establishment that served food to unprivileged people in Sao Paulo at lower prices, and that’s how they managed to eat every single day.

“The breakfast was R$0.50 (approx. eight cents USD) and the lunch was R$1.00 (17 cents),” Lopes says. “We left home at six in the morning and had breakfast, and then took the train and subway to Perus. Two hours to get to Reviravolta’s gym, every day. It was crazy because training started at 10 and then we had another session at four p.m. Everybody brought their food to eat but we didn’t have it, so we went upstairs and waited behind the octagon to get some rest and wait for the other training session.”

Lopes’ coach and teammates eventually noticed the trio wasn’t having lunch. They were too embarrassed to admit they had no money for meals.

“We didn’t have anything to eat, and little by little people started to help us” Lopes said. “Friends brought lunch for us. Sometimes master Vinicius helped us with food as well. Reginaldo Vieira was training for [The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 4] final at that time, and he would often give us R$50 to eat.”

That money meant more than 10 days of breakfast and lunch for each of the three, but they would often share one and save some money for a rainy day.

Lopes tapped out Isaque Silva in his first fight after moving to Sao Paulo, and went on to TKO another opponent later that year. Lopes was doing well in grappling tournaments too, and decided to take a chance for bigger opportunities outside of Sao Paulo. Some were comfortable in Sao Paulo, but Lopes wanted more. He told Reviravolta he was open to traveling anywhere in the world to continue his career.

Lopes improved to 6-2 with a quick heel hook finish in April 2015 when the call came. Reviravolta was approached by a group in Mexico looking for talented grapplers to coach jiu-jitsu in the country, and no one else on the team sounded interested.

Lopes immediately raised his hand.

On Sept. 22, three days after tapping Gilberto Pantoja in Sao Paulo, Lopes walked to gate 20 of the Sao Paulo international airport to board the CM724Y flight on way to Cancun.

And so began a new history, a new life. The next chapter of that story goes down Saturday night in Miami, but the path there was not easy.

Lopes was hired by a gym in Playa Del Carmen to teach jiu-jitsu. He met Alessandro Costa, a fellow manauara who would become his best friend and also join the UFC years later. They both had a monthly salary, a place to live, but that all came to an abrupt end.

“We got screwed, and I decided to leave,” Lopes says. “We ended up coming to Puebla and things got rough. Money was short, and all the money I had saved was gone, little by little. Alessandro and I went back to living in a gym.”

Reviravolta knew a place in Puebla that needed good grapplers, and made the connection. Lopes and Costa had a new place to call home, but it wasn’t easy.

“I remember we lived in the gym and there wasn’t even a shower,” Lopes says. “We took a shower using buckets.”

Lopes and Costa stayed there for some time before deciding to open a gym. They were Brazilians and had good jiu-jitsu, so the idea of having their own place to teach sounded perfect.

Wrong. They went bankrupt and soon it was back to square one.

The boys that left Manaus as jiu-jitsu practitioners looking for MMA success were now on a winning streak in Mexico, but with no place to train. Funny enough, it was Lopes’ aggressive grappling that ended up changing his life.

“The first time people started to know about me here in Mexico was when there was a jiu-jitsu tournament that paid extra money per submission,” Lopes says. “It wasn’t much, 800 pesos, and I had to win five matches.”

One of Lopes’ friends raffled a rash guard to borrow money to buy his ticket to the tournament.

“It was the exact amount for the trip, roundtrip,” Lopes says. “When I was about to leave I told Alessandro I had the money to buy my ticket, but I was like, ‘Fuck it, come with me.’ There’s one more reason for me win, or we can’t go back. I have to win.”

Lopes bought two one-way tickets and got on the road with Costa. He won five matches the next day, four by submission, and that’s when Diego Lopes became a known commodity in the local grappling circuit.

“It opened many doors for me,” Lopes says. “To compete in more tournaments, to teach seminars, everything. It was such a cool experience.”

At one point of his career, Lopes rode an eight-fight winning streak. He won and defended the LUX Fight League championship with submissions during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the call wasn’t coming. Despite all the struggles, moving back to Manaus wasn’t an option.

“My goal was pretty clear,” Lopes says. “I didn’t want to go back to Manaus, I didn’t want to go back to Sao Paulo, I didn’t want to go back to Brazil. I knew that there were many opportunities for me here. When there was nothing for us to eat, we would buy cheap bread and save it for the week. We worked as night club bouncers, we worked as waiters, we worked as gardeners. We went everywhere no matter how much we’d be paid. We had nothing to eat and no money to buy anything.

“At that point, it doesn’t matter how much you’re getting paid, what matters is having enough to eat and feel strong to train. Of course, sometimes we were like, ‘F*ck, what are we going to do? What are we going to eat tomorrow? What are we going to eat today? What are we going to do? Where can we get a job? But Alessandro was the key because whenever one of us was feeling down, the other one would motivate you. We never let each other feel down.”

The call finally came in August 2021, a chance to compete for a UFC deal at Dana White’s Contender Series. Again, heartbreak. Joanderson Brito left victorious via a technical decision after an eye poke rendered Lopes unable to continue. Two months later, now fighting in the local circuit in the United States, another decision loss for Lopes, this time against Nate Richardson at Fury FC.

Lopes finally turned things around in 2022, scoring two knockouts in a row at Fury FC to again put his name on the UFC radar. Lopes was offered a last-minute chance to replace Bryce Mitchell against undefeated and feared Russian machine Movsar Evloev at UFC 288 in Newark, N.J. Lopes lost, but put on the kind of performance that introduced his name to the world.

Gavin Tucker, Pat Sabatini, Sodiq Yusuff, Dan Ige and Brian Ortega, they all stood and fell in front of the Brazilian. One after the other. Evloev, who campaigned for a shot at the UFC gold, was left behind by the same man he once beat. With Ilia Topuria vacating the featherweight throne to chase lightweight destiny, it’s Lopes’ turn to make history.

“I was able to make my dream come true,” Lopes says. “My dream was to have something to eat because I would still fight with or without having something to eat. We went to tournaments to win and having something to eat. That’s what really mattered for us, really.

“And it was all worth it, man. I don’t regret anything. I’m happy with everything that happened. I left home 11 years ago and it all worked out. All the sacrifices and hard work. To be blessed with the opportunity of fighting for the belt is something that motivates me a lot. I’ll show I deserve this shot. I was away from my family and friends to have what I have today.”