Alex Pereira is the UFC’s go-to guy — but even he had his limits tested this past weekend.
Following his UFC 307 main event win over Khalil Rountree Jr., the reigning light heavyweight champion told reporters a number of maladies threatened to force him to withdraw from Saturday’s show in Salt Lake City. Among the list of obstacles Pereira dealt with ahead of fight night were a rib injury, a fever, and issues with his visa.
Despite the issues, Pereira made it to the cage and delivered as usual, but UFC commentator Daniel Cormier confirmed that he heard Pereira’s presence was in serious jeopardy, and that had he not competed, the bantamweight title bout between Raquel Pennington and Julianna Peña would have headlined UFC 307.
“I was talking to his manager and his coach after the fight and they said they told the UFC, ‘We’re going to go to Salt Lake. We’re going to try to train. But we may pull out,’” Cormier said on his Good Guy/Bad Guy podcast. “The UFC said to him, ‘That would suck, but let us know how it goes. Because we have two title fights, we’ll elevate one of that’s what we need to do.’
“He fights. The good will you gain from the organization when you do that is unbelievable. So if he did go into the offices of [UFC CEO] Dana [White] and [UFC CBO] Hunter [Campbell] and those guys and go, ‘I would like to fight Tom Aspinall for the interim championship,’ those actions he showed last weekend leads to you receiving those types of opportunities. So the world really is his oyster in terms of what he can do next if he so chooses to try and fight up at heavyweight. But for me, it’s fight [Magomed] Ankalaev. Right now, you’ve got to fight Ankalaev if he gets through [Aleksandar] Rakic.”
Cormier’s podcast co-host Chael Sonnen, was equally in awe of Pereira’s winning mixture of professionalism and performance, comparing “Poatan” to some of combat sports’ most intimidating personalities.
“The first time Wanderlei Silva was ever in my presence, he walked into a gym at Randy Couture’s and I remember I was out on the mat sparring,” Sonnen said. “He just walked in, he got his bag over his shoulder, I swear to goodness I could feel something around him. I felt that same way when I saw Royce [Gracie], the first time I saw Mike Tyson, Pereira is getting there. There is something happening at all times.
“This guy is embracing the entertainment side. … On the way out of the arena, the crowd stuck right after the main event and he begins a ‘Chama’ chant and they’re doing it back over and over. The Rock is about the only entertainer out there that can get the audience to engage, get the audience to stand up and do a chant back. We’ve got a guy that doesn’t even speak the tongue natively and he’s the one leading this. I’ve really never seen anything like Pereira, from a fighter to a presence to a leader to an inspiration, the guy is special and I would not have predicted this.”
All in all, that’s three title fight wins for Pereira in 2024 and four in less than 12 months. Pereira made the decision to fully commit to MMA in 2020 following a decorated kickboxing career, and in this relatively short time he has arguably become the face of the UFC.
For all of Pereira’s talents — his technical striking, his pure power, his durability — Cormier believes that his best ability is availability.
“People are locked into this guy and they love him and there’s nothing more important in fighting than being present,” Cormier said. “Him fighting as often as he does makes him more valuable, not only to the company, but to fans. Because a lot of times you get a guy that wins the belt, then he’s gone for a while. Ilia Topuria won the belt in [February], he hasn’t fought again. He’s not fighting until the next pay-per-view.
“It takes time for champions to go away and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but for Pereira, he has somehow managed to be active and still have the fans fall in love with him, but that comes down to his fighting style. I was literally sitting next to that cage on Saturday night and I thought to myself if those opportunities were that present, I would have made much more money over the course of my career because I would have kept fighting, too. It just didn’t seem like we had that many chances to fight. And then I thought about it, I don’t know if I would have wanted to make weight as many times as I did. He’s doing everything. He’s making the weight, he’s fighting, he’s winning, defending championships, it really is a special time to watch a guy do things in mixed martial arts that I don’t know that we’ve ever seen before.”
