Colby Covington has seen what Alex Pereira can do firsthand and he believes “Poatan” has the power to put down Jon Jones.
There’s no love lost between Covington and Jones, former college roommates who have since publicly traded barbs on multiple occasions during their pro fighting careers. Both have had great success following their amateur wrestling days, with Covington becoming a longtime contender at 170 pounds and Jones putting together an unimpeachable run as the UFC’s light heavyweight champion while also adding heavyweight gold to his collection.
Unsurprisingly, in a superfight between current light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira and Jones, Covington likes Pereira’s chances to add Jones to his list of incredible knockouts.
“For sure,” Covington told Submission Radio when asked if Pereira could avoid Jones’ grappling and land a finishing strike. “He could definitely catch him. No doubt about it, Jon’s going to shoot for those legs. He’s not going to want to get cracked by Alex Pereira, so that left hook and those kicks are lethal, so I definitely think he can knock out Jon with a nice little left hook.”
Pereira was arguably the Fighter of the Year in 2024, headlining three UFC pay-per-views and successfully defending his title each time via KO/TKO. Though the light heavyweight division has a clear-cut No. 1 contender in Magomed Ankalaev, there has been plenty of buzz about Pereira potentially moving up to heavyweight to fight Jones.
One reason Covington is confident in Pereira’s abilities is that he previously trained with the Brazilian knockout artist. Before Pereira fully committed to MMA and became a two-division UFC champion, he was a star in the kickboxing world (where he also captured a pair of Glory belts), and Covington recalls working with Pereira’s team to prepare him for a transition to cagefighting.
“There’s no way you can’t be impressed with the body of work that Alex has done,” Covington said. “Showing up on short notice, saving cards, knocking people silly unconscious into another dimension. I’ve always respected and liked Alex. I trained with him at that gym we were talking about before probably seven or eight years ago. He came in with Glover Teixeira and I was good friends with Glover, we would always go fishing and barbecue in his backyard, so he brought in Alex and he wanted me to help him with wrestling because he was this great Glory kickboxer, like nasty, like future champ in kickboxing and no one was going to beat him. So he knew he was already going to get into MMA at that time when he was kickboxing, but he just wanted to get more experience in the striking before he made his run in MMA.
“So I was helping him with wrestling for a little bit. I respect the guy. He’s a great figher and he’s had a great run, you can’t downplay what he’s been able to accomplish in this short amount of time.”
