Moreno focused on Kai Kara-France

Brandon Moreno and the UFC couldn’t wait. Flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo first argued acts of racism by the Mexican’s team and later an injury that would keep him out until the end of the year to postpone the fourth fight between the two.

The promotion decided to go ahead with an interim title fight against New Zealand’s Kai Kara-France at UFC 277 on July 30. This was confirmed by Moreno’s representative agency, Iridium on Wednesday.

The Tijuana native is focused on the second fight with Kara-France, but is convinced Figueiredo was just an excuse not to fight him.

“He didn’t want to fight, everybody wanted that fight but him. The guy was set to fight me and after that nothing. There was talk of us fighting in May, in this event in Phoenix, but he asked for a lot of money, the UFC told him no, he doesn’t even sell two general area tickets. First the racism thing, which we already talked about and then he was injured; look, at the end of the day if he is injured, speedy recovery, hopefully we can fight in the future”.

From his point of view, it is his team that is keeping him away from a fight that he himself had offered, even in Mexico. “It tells you about the kind of champion he is and the people he is surrounded by, I think they are sabotaging him very badly with the kind of advice they are giving him. That injury thing didn’t come out in the beginning, it was the last resort, when he felt the noose around his neck that’s why it looks so fake, so unreal.”

Since this week he traveled to Kansas City, where he will make his first camp at James Kause’s Glory gym: “I want to close that page because the mistake that the rivals have taken with Kai is that they have not respected him, Cody Garbrandt went down a division and was already thinking about the championship; Askar Askarov came to the fight week and started talking about the championship, talking bad about me, without realizing that he had Kai in front of him, without realizing how much Kai has improved”, acknowledged the former champion.

For him there is no big difference between an undisputed or interim belt, beyond the “decoration” at home, but to be able to face the best and prove that he belongs to that list.

“I don’t really fight for the belt, for my legacy. For saying I’m great and being one of the best in mixed martial arts that Mexico has given. It’s a title, it motivates me, it’s against a very good opponent, who has shown a lot of evolution, especially since he lost to Royval,” said the 28-year-old fighter.

Everyone talks about the moment Kara-France is going through, with three consecutive victories against Rogerio Bontorin, Garbrandt and Askarov, but Moreno remembers that he has also grown since his fight at UFC 245, in December 2019.

“When I fought Kai I was just about 13 or 14 months old working my striking with Drift Cortes in Tijuana, improving my kicking. People expected me to knock him down, but I wanted to see how I felt, he touched me in the first round, but already later I realized that my jaw was fine, I think my jaw is very good. Afterwards I felt confident to exchange”, he explained.

The biggest danger of his opponent, he says, is the new attitude he shows since Brandon Royval defeated him by submission. “I think when he goes to the fight with Bortorin there is already something different in him, he looks more motivated, I know he became a family man. I can relate, that motivates you a lot, I can no longer fail, because there is someone who depends on me.”

Moreno is used to fight five rounds, while for Kara-France it will be the first time he will have to work physically for 25 minutes.

“That gives me the advantage mentally, I’m not saying it’s an extra, but out there it will be in his mind to know if he can last the 25 minutes exchanging. He is in a big gym, but he was already in one when we faced each other the first time, Izzy was already there, Volkanovski and Dan Hooker were already there in their best moment”, considers the Tijuana native.

After more than 12 years training at Entram Gym in his native Tijuana, Moreno decided to look for a new gym and assures that it was Krause’s 24-hour-a-day passion for MMA that convinced him since they met at a UFC community event in Las Vegas.

“I’m not going to deny that I’m nervous about the change. But one thing that has generated a lot of success for me is not being afraid to make decisions, it’s one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made in my life because I’ve been in Entram since I started at 16 years old. But people have to understand a little bit that the comfort zone attacks you where you least realize it. It goes beyond comfort or whether you train in a nice gym.”

In his words, it was about returning to seek new knowledge, as he did many times in the past when he worked at other gyms in the U.S. for seasons, but he hopes that talent will continue to come out of the border city.

“Entram is by far the best gym in Latin America and wait until they announce the Contender Series fights this year, they just announced Yazmin Jauregui, who I seriously believe is going to be UFC champion, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but she will be. One of the keys to my success was also that I used to travel, I went to train in Arizona, Denver, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, I hadn’t done it for a long time because I felt I didn’t need to because I felt that everything was going well and I don’t want to wait for it to go bad again, I want to make my decisions”, she said.

Now he will have two partners who have been in his corner in the last fights in the Argentine Marcelo Rojo and Masio Fullen, in addition to coach Pedro Jolla, who was in his UFC 263 fight, when he was crowned, but also found a good level of sparring in Glory MMA.

Moreno knows that the fight could take place in a city with a Latino audience like Dallas or Chicago, where the people will be on his side and although he was always used to being the underdog, he is used to dealing with the pressure in a different way: “Maybe people now expect more from me, but that motivation has helped push me forward.”

The UFC has not yet made official the venue for the bout, which will represent the first occasion in which the flyweight contests an interim belt.