Moreno grew up in a working-class Tijuana household. His parents, Alfredo Moreno and Cecilia Carrillo, ran a piñata business that eventually expanded to Los Angeles, per a 2025 EssentiallySports feature. He started boxing at 12. His mother saw combat sports as a distraction at first and pushed him toward school, she told ESPN. His UFC arrival came through a side door. After months training with Henry Cejudo, Moreno entered “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 24 in 2016 as the No. 16 seed, lost to Alexandre Pantoja in the bracket, then got called up on short notice to replace Sergio Pettis against Louis Smolka. He submitted Smolka in the first round.
In the cage, Moreno is a high-volume, durable flyweight who mixes pressure striking with an opportunistic ground game. He lands 3.84 significant strikes per minute at 50% accuracy, and his takedown defense and scrambling have been his survival tools against grapplers. The submission column tells the rest: 11 of his 23 wins come by tap, more than double his knockout total. The cracks have shown late in his career — trouble closing five-round fights on the cards, and a vulnerability to fast, technical strikers that Taira exploited in the knockout.
The defining stretch ran from 2020 to 2023. Moreno fought for the flyweight title six straight times, four of them against Deiveson Figueiredo. He drew Figueiredo at UFC 256, submitted him by rear-naked choke at UFC 263 to claim the belt, lost the rematch by decision at UFC 270, then reclaimed the interim title via doctor’s stoppage at UFC 283 in January 2023. In between, he stopped Kai Kara-France by TKO at UFC 277. The run ended with a split-decision loss to Pantoja at UFC 290 in July 2023. Since then he’s gone 2-3, with wins over Amir Albazi and Steve Erceg sandwiched between losses to Brandon Royval, Taira and Kavanagh.
Two losses in, Moreno is no longer near the top of the flyweight ladder. The question is whether he can build one more run at 125, or settle into the role of gatekeeper and headliner for Mexico-based cards. He’s already done what no other Mexican fighter has done in the UFC. That doesn’t move, whatever comes next.