Marcos Degli Wants to Be Flyweight's Carlos Prates on DWCS Debut

Marcos Degli finally gets his shot Tuesday night at the UFC APEX, where a win over Paris Moran on Dana White's Contender Series could land the Brazilian flyweight a contract. He arrives at 14-3, riding a 12-fight winning streak, 11 of those wins by finish — the kind of resume that usually gets a prospect in the door a lot sooner.

The wait has been real. Named one of Brazil's top prospects to watch back in 2024, Degli spent the stretch since building his case: three straight title wins in LFA, all by knockout, to claim and then defend the belt. Thirteen of his 14 career victories have come by KO or submission, and that finishing rate is the pitch he's selling.

The Prates Blueprint

Degli trains at Vale Top Team alongside Carlos Prates, and he's not shy about borrowing the model. He wants to be the Prates of the 125-pound division — a walk-forward finisher with real knockout power in a weight class that historically doesn't have much of it. Prates has publicly campaigned for his teammate more than once, and Degli says that endorsement does more for his confidence than any media bump.

His read on the flyweight landscape is blunt. For years he barely followed his own division, but he sees a wave of young talent arriving now and reckons the class is only going to grow. What's still missing, in his view, is punching power — and that's the gap he intends to fill.

A Near-Miss With Moreno

This isn't Degli's first brush with the big leagues. He flew to Perth to watch Prates beat Jack Della Maddalena and volunteered to step in against Marwan Rahiki at featherweight, only to be blocked by visa issues. Earlier this year his manager pushed to get him signed as a replacement for Asu Almabayev — the No. 7-ranked flyweight — against former champ Brandon Moreno, now sitting at No. 9 with a 24-10-2 record. Degli says he got the 2 a.m. text and was ready to start cutting weight on the spot before the deal fell through.

Against Moran, Degli faces an opponent with an identical record but, he argues, a softer resume and no finishing instinct — most of Moran's fights have gone to the scorecards. Degli expects his hands to change that math early, and he's braced for the clinch if Moran tries to slow things down. He says the version of himself that steps into the cage is colder and more calculated than the one talking now, which is exactly what a career-defining night calls for.