Allan Nascimento chase his fifth straight victory in the UFC when he faces off with Mitch Raposo and he’s baffled that he has yet to be ranked in the flyweight division.
“Puro Osso” had a rough time getting into the cage between 2022 and 2024, mostly due to his injuries, but seems to have figured things out in 2025 with a pair of victories over Jafel Filho and a bonus-winning submission over Cody Durden. He was originally scheduled to face Raposo on April 18, but the bout was postponed due to his opponent’s illness and rescheduled for UFC Vegas 119 this Saturday.
Being more active has not been enough to get Nascimento into the top 15, though, and he can’t find logic in it.
“I don’t even know if I create expectations around the rankings, to be honest,” Nascimento told MMA Fighting. “The rankings are totally influenced by the people who make them. When you bring in an athlete coming off a loss, one who has never been ranked before, and put them at No. 15, while another athlete on a four-fight win streak doesn’t get in, there’s no logic to it.”
“I want to be in the rankings, I want to be part of them, but I don’t build expectations around that,” he added. “Unfortunately, I have to be honest about it. Of course I want to be in the top 15, top 10, top 5, but it doesn’t depend only on me. It depends on the people who vote and choose who they want there.”
The Chute Boxe athlete said that “at some point, with win after win, there won’t be much of a way around it” and he will be among the 15 best in the division, but that’s in the hands of the ranking panelists. Beating Raposo in Las Vegas will definitely help his case, as will maintaining a more consistent schedule in the UFC.
“Rhythm makes a difference for every athlete,” Nascimento said. “MMA is much harder compared to any other sport in terms of competitiveness. A tennis player might have 200, 300, 400 matches in a career. Soccer or basketball players have over 100 competitions. In fighting, it’s very limited. We know training is hard and intense, but it’s only inside the cage that you truly feel the things that change the environment. Going into another fight in such a short time is great because that feeling is still fresh.”
“I may be biased because it’s my sport but MMA is the hardest and most unforgiving sport,” he continued. “A loss for someone like [Rafael] Nadal or another tennis player hurts, but they can bounce back the following week with a win. In the NBA or in soccer, you can recover come back from a loss and that negative feeling. In fighting, one loss can drop you three or four steps and really sink you, changing your entire perspective — especially in the UFC. So let’s go for another fight. Charles opened the doors in the UFC, and now it’s time to keep stacking wins.”
Charles Oliveira beat Mateusz Gamrot in October and followed it up with a one-sided grappling clinic against Max Holloway to claim the BMF belt earlier this year, and he’s been in Nascimento’s corner for most of his UFC career. A finisher like “do Bronx” with nearly 75 percent of his MMA wins coming by way of submission, Nascimento feels the criticism towards his friend’s BMF title victory was unfair.
“He won, he became BMF champion, but what really matters is going on his Sherdog and Tapology [pages] and seeing that green win mark,” Nascimento said. “A lot of people talk but they don’t know what’s at stake with Charles beating Max. People who talk are completely on the outside, they just want entertainment, not the sport. Charles dominated, showed high-level MMA, incredible quality. He put himself on a higher level in pursuit of even greater achievements. We need to entertain the fans, get the crowd going, but at the end of the day, we need to secure the win.
“No disrespect to Max Holloway, of course, but Charles made it look easy using his strongest weapon, which is jiu-jitsu. We know Charles’ technical level in striking, his power, but we also know there are paths that are better, some more difficult, and he chose the most solid path. We saw how much higher his level is compared to Max Holloway and other UFC athletes.”
Raposo walks to the octagon at UFC Vegas 119 with his back against the wall after a 1-2 start in the promotion after past defeats on Dana White’s Contender Series and The Ultimate Fighter, but Nascimento won’t underestimate an opponent he views as “explosive.” Yet, he vows to “find the right openings in his game to get the win.”
If he can be dominant and entertaining at the same time, perfect.
“We’re talking about MMA,” Nascimento said. “We know the UFC likes entertainment, especially now with Paramount involved. The push to hype the crowd and bring in more fans is bigger than ever. But as I always say, a win guarantees much more than just entertainment. We see many fighters who are entertaining and put on great fights and excite the crowd, but three or four losses later they’re out of the UFC.”
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