Tom Aspinall recently told TNT Sports that Alex Pereira was given matchups that “were quite favorable” until he had to defend his belt against Magomed Ankalaev earlier this year.
“Poatan” doesn’t agree with the UFC heavyweight champion’s assessment.
“Just with the threats of the takedown,” Aspinall said, “Even in the first fight we didn’t really see Ankalaev really go for the takedowns too much, but I think just the threat being there, stylistically he’s a bad matchup for Pereira.”
A former GLORY kickboxing
two-division champion, Pereira moved to Danbury, Conn., in 2020 to help Glover Teixeira prepare for an upcoming fight with Thiago Santos. In return, Teixeira helped him work on his grappling and wrestling skills to later transition to mixed martial arts.
Pereira won an LFA fight later that year—his first MMA contest in over four years—with a scary knockout of Thomas Powell that ultimately led to a deal with the UFC after he parted ways with GLORY.
From there, Pereira had an incredibly fast rise, challenging and dethroning Israel Adesanya at middleweight after beating Andreas Michailidis, Bruno Silva, and Sean Strickland. Pereira lost an immediate rematch with Adesanya by knockout.
At light heavyweight, “Poatan” won a split decision over Jan Blachowicz before claiming and defending the title with vicious knockouts of Jiri Prochazka (twice), Jamahal Hill, and Khalil Rountree before dropping a decision to Ankalaev earlier this year.
In his response to Aspinall, the UFC star argues that being a pure kickboxer with less than two years of experience training for a full-time return to MMA automatically made any athlete on the company roster a complicated matchup for him.
“We’re talking about the biggest organization in the world,” Pereira said during the UFC 320 media day on Wednesday. “I’m a guy who comes from kickboxing, I had no grappling experience, little experience in MMA. We’re talking about the highest level of the sport, so if you were to put the worst guy in the UFC against me, I’d be at disadvantage, so that makes no sense.”
Pereira and Ankalaev went the distance in March and the Russian talent failed in every single one of his 12 takedown attempts, but outstruck the kickboxing specialist on the feet to win the 205-pound title.
