Alex Pereira righted the wrongs of his loss to Magomed Ankalaev by coming out and laying waste to the Russian in under two minutes to reclaim his light heavyweight title in the UFC 320 main event.
Afterwards,
Pereira admitted he had an entire post-fight speech planned but he ultimately opted to use his interview to ask for a moment of silence to honor Jon Jones’ brother Arthur Jones, who tragically died at just 39 years old on Friday. But Pereira even mentioning Jones immediately got everybody’s attention because “Poatan” has often talked about eventually moving to heavyweight and a showdown against the fighter most widely considered the greatest of all-time would certainly sound appealing.
While Pereira’s aspirations might eventually lure him to heavyweight, UFC CEO Dana White admits he’s not exactly in love with the idea.
“So today I was at work and I had a bunch of meetings over there this afternoon and I went over to the [UFC Performance Institute] and [Alex Pereira] was over in the P.I.” White revealed during the UFC 320 post-fight press conference. “I’m like well you’re the last guy I expected to see here today. What are you doing here? They’re telling me ‘we want to fight at heavyweight.’ I said how about we win tonight and focus on tonight and then we can talk about heavyweight.
“I don’t know. There’s still fights here in this division but we’ll see. This guy has been an absolute stud for us. He’s on vacation in Australia, flies over and fights because somebody fell out. He fights when he’s hurt. He doesn’t care. He wants to fight everybody. He wants to move up to heavyweight. He’s a dream to have in this organization.”
Prior to his lopsided win over Ankalaev on Saturday, Pereira said that he probably only had a finite number of cuts down to 205 pounds in him anyways, which is another reason why he was considering a move to heavyweight.
Obviously that sounds like Pereira isn’t worried about how he matches up size wise to the biggest fighters in the division but that still might not convince White.
“Probably that he was a middleweight and he’s going to jump up two weight classes in the UFC,” White said about his concerns to let Pereira go to heavyweight. “It’s not like jumping up two weight classes in boxing. It’s a big jump.
“It’s not that I have reservations about it. He’s in a division where there’s still some interesting fights. I like the guy so much. We’ll see. We’ll have to talk about it. I just don’t see why, unless he wants to retire, why throwing him at heavyweight makes any sense other than I just end up saying he wants to do it so bad, I’ll just say yes.”
It’s unlikely that Ankalaev would get a third fight with Pereira right away given how the rematch ended, but Carlos Ulberg is still out there riding an impressive win streak and he could potentially insert himself as the No. 1 contender in the division. Jiri Prochazka also scored a knockout win at UFC 320, although he already has two past losses to Pereira on his record.
Meanwhile, Pereira potentially challenging Jones or even the winner of the UFC 321 main event between Tom Aspinall and Ciryl Gane certainly sounds interesting.
White clearly stopped doubting Pereira a long time ago so anything seems possible, especially after he delivered on his promise to dismantle and dispatch Ankalaev on Saturday.
“It’s one thing to say that and then you come in and deliver like you did tonight,” White said. “He did everything he said he was going to do.
“People love him. People love the way he fights. Can’t be bummed out with the way he performed tonight.”
