RIO DE JANEIRO — Jhonata Diniz wants to follow up the thrill of a UFC Rio victory over Mario Pinto this Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with the excitement of skydiving Sunday.
Diniz pulled a stunt prior to his most recent UFC win over Alvin Hines in June, a fist-fight in a hot air balloon 5,000 feet in the clouds. He promised something 10 times more exciting to celebrate that victory, but he wasn’t able to get the plan off the paper.
“We had some plans going on,” Diniz told MMA Fighting during the UFC Rio media day. “I won’t give away any spoilers for now, but there are some cool things in the project. This team that is working with me is bringing some ideas for a long time now, so stay tuned because it’s going to be really cool.
“If all goes right — and it will — and I come out with the win this weekend, we’ll be landing on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. I’ll be thrown off a plane to celebrate this victory.”
A kickboxing veteran who has now won three times in four UFC appearances plus one Contender Series finish, Diniz looks at radical sports as a way to relax and step away from martial arts for a moment.
“I don’t know if it’s an addiction, but it’s definitely a dependence,” Diniz said. “It’s something I’ve always had in my life, this pursue for adrenaline. I really like snowboarding, kitesurfing, wakeboarding. I like any sport that is not the norm because that way I can escape a little bit from the fight world. I can be present 100 percent and not think about fights. It’s my escape. I think it’s more than an addiction or anything like that, it’s therapy for me.”
Diniz made the transition from kickboxing to MMA in 2022, after competing with the likes of Rico Verhoeven in GLORY, and is now looking to win two in a row since his first his first MMA loss to Marcin Tybura in November 2024.
“My fight with Tybura was a great lesson for me,” Diniz said. “I’ve evolved a lot since that fight. I understood I can’t focus only on training one aspect. Now we train MMA as a whole. I’ve been trying to evolve in all areas of the game. Grappling is one of the areas I only started training recently so I need to pay more attention to that. I really feel like a real MMA fighter now. Not that long ago I was just a striker trying myself out with small gloves, but now I really feel like a MMA fighter ready to fight anyone.”
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