Deiveson Figueiredo was born on December 18, 1987, in Soure, a small city on Marajo Island in the Brazilian state of Para, near the mouth of the Amazon River. His father worked as a buffalo herder and practiced luta marajoara, a local folk wrestling style unique to the island, and Figueiredo grew up in a modest household alongside a younger sister and a younger brother, Francisco, who would later also sign with the UFC. Details of his early life and family background are documented on Wikipedia.

He worked as a cowboy on his father’s animal farm until he was thirteen, herding cattle through the muddy fields of Marajo before the family moved him to the city of Belem, where he was introduced to capoeira and, soon after, mixed martial arts under coach Iuri “Marajo” Alcantara. Before fighting became a career, he held a string of jobs to get by, including bricklayer, hairdresser, motorcycle taxi driver and sushi chef.

Figueiredo turned professional in February 2012, submitting Aluisio Ferreira in the first round, and spent the next several years fighting almost exclusively on the Para and Maranhao regional circuits, building a reputation as a dangerous submission specialist off the back of his Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. His full early record is tracked on Tapology’s fighter database.

He signed with the more established Jungle Fight promotion in December 2014, stopping Rayner Silva by TKO in his debut, a run that built enough momentum to earn him a UFC contract. He made his UFC debut on June 3, 2017, at UFC 212 in Rio de Janeiro, stopping Marco Beltran by first-round TKO in front of a home crowd.

Figueiredo’s title breakthrough came on July 18, 2020, when he submitted Joseph Benavidez with a first-round rear-naked choke to claim the vacant UFC flyweight championship, a rematch of their February meeting that ended the same way but did not count for the belt because Figueiredo had missed weight. The vacant-title win, detailed by ESPN’s coverage of the finish, made him Brazil’s newest UFC champion.

He defended the belt for the first time against Alex Perez at UFC 255 in November 2020, finishing him by first-round submission, before closing out an unbeaten championship year with a majority draw against Brandon Moreno at UFC 256 in December, an instant classic that set up one of the division’s defining rivalries.

Figueiredo and Moreno went on to fight four times between December 2020 and January 2023, the first four-fight series between the same two opponents in UFC history. Moreno won the second meeting by submission at UFC 263, Figueiredo won the third by decision at UFC 270 to reclaim the title, and Moreno won the fourth by doctor stoppage at UFC 283, a full breakdown of which is tracked by Sherdog’s statistical review of the tetralogy.

Across his two flyweight title reigns he set UFC flyweight division records for most knockdowns landed and most submission attempts, before moving up to bantamweight in December 2023 and immediately beating former champion Rob Font by decision, then finishing former champion Cody Garbrandt at UFC 300 in April 2024 and outpointing Marlon Vera, a run that put him back in title contention in a second weight class.

His 2020 campaign, a 3-0-1 run that included three finishes and the instant-classic draw with Moreno, earned him Sherdog’s 2020 Fighter of the Year award, recognition covered in Sherdog’s year-end honors, alongside similar Fighter of the Year recognition from Bleacher Report and CBS Sports for the same stretch.

In Brazil, and particularly in his home state of Para, Figueiredo is treated as a hometown hero whose rise from a buffalo-herding, bricklaying background to two-time UFC champion is regularly retold in Brazilian sports media, and he remains a frequent guest on MMA podcasts discussing his path to the top.

During his flyweight title reign, Figueiredo’s sponsor roster included fight-kit brand Venum alongside Sea Telecom, Haymakers, Neuro Force 1 and Crypto.com, partnerships detailed by Firstsportz’s rundown of his net worth and sponsors.

More recently he has added a Funko collectibles bobblehead made in his likeness and a marketing partnership with DNS Business, additions to his endorsement portfolio noted by EssentiallySports’ 2026 net worth breakdown.

Once his UFC purses started to grow, Figueiredo returned to Belem and, together with his brother Francisco, opened Team Figueiredo, a gym that trains the next generation of Para-based fighters under striking coach Luciano Nogueira, a training setup detailed by EssentiallySports’ breakdown of his camp.

Running the gym has not been without cost to his fighting career. His longtime manager Wallid Ismail said he warned Figueiredo against opening the business before his second fight with Moreno, and Figueiredo later acknowledged the demands of the gym had pulled his focus away from training camp, a distraction covered by Firstsportz’s report on Ismail’s comments.

Figueiredo’s most talked-about asset is not a house or a car but a pet water buffalo named Ferdinand, purchased with early UFC earnings as a nod to his father’s buffalo-herding trade on Marajo Island; the buffalo has become a recurring fixture on his social media, as reported by Sportskeeda’s feature on Figueiredo’s pet buffalo.

Beyond Ferdinand, no specific address, purchase price or additional real estate portfolio has been publicly documented. Secondary write-ups describe him as living comfortably off his fight earnings between Belem and his training base, a characterization offered by eCelebrityMirror, but no luxury vehicle collection or investment property has been independently verified in public reporting at the time of writing.