Daniel Cormier thinks knockout artist Alex Pereira may want to be cautious as he moves up a division.
Pereira is set to make his MMA light heavyweight debut on July 29 at UFC 291 when he fights former UFC champion Jan Blachowicz. Competing at 205 pounds isn’t entirely new for Pereira, a former two-division champion in kickboxing. He won UFC gold at middleweight this past November with a fifth-round knockout of longtime rival Israel Adesanya before dropping the title back to Adesanya in an immediate rematch five months later at UFC 287.
In both fights, Adesanya showed he could put Pereira down, as he had him rocked in their first fight and finished him in Round 2 in their second fight. Cormier foresees Blachowicz potentially doing the same to Pereira if the Brazilian slugger makes a mistake.
“We have seen Adesanya hurt Pereira in two fights,” Cormier said on the DC & RC podcast. “He can’t get hit by Jan Blachowicz. Blachowicz hits so hard. I have seen Blachowicz almost decapitate guys. Luke Rockhold, Dominick Reyes, the way that he was knocking out guys for a while was very scary.”
Following a TKO loss to Thiago Santos in February 2019, Blachowicz went on a frightening tear with knockouts of Reyes, Rockhold, and Corey Anderson, plus a light heavyweight title defense via decision over Adesanya. He failed to reclaim a vacant belt this past December at UFC 282 when he battled Magomed Ankalaev to a disappointing split draw.
Going back to Blachowicz’s clash with Adesanya, Cormier isn’t sure if he agrees with “The Last Stylebender” recently suggesting that Blachowicz may just use his wrestling to smother Pereira as opposed to risking a back-and-forth striking encounter.
“Izzy also was light that fight,” Cormier said. “I think Adesanya weighed, like, [200.5 pounds] whenever he fought against Jan Blachowicz. So it took a little bit of time for him to get it going. But he thinks that Jan Blachowicz is going to try to take [Pereira] down and beat him up there because Izzy got taken down by Jan Blachowicz.”
