It's all coming together for Alexei Pergande: the skills, the promotion, the following, and the timing.
One of PFL's hottest rising prospects, Pergande (8-0) competes Saturday at PFL Dubai against Akhmed Magomedov (11-2) – and there will be more people paying attention than ever before.
Pergande, 25, hasn't competed since March but that doesn't mean he's been slacking. He's built a massive social media following, approximately 1.5 million followers combined across platforms including 839,000 on TikTok, 415,000 on Instagram, 202,000 on YouTube, and 109,000 on Facebook.
"A lot of people think they're going to post a few highlights of them punching the bag or punching the mitts and then they're going to explode and go viral," Pergande recently told
MMA Junkie. "It just doesn't work like that. I almost treat social media as my job. I treat each one of these social media platforms – TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube – all of them as my bosses. I have to show up to work, and if I don't show up to work every single day, then those bosses start losing trust with me. They're like, 'Why aren't you at work today?' That's the best way to describe how I was doing it. Lots of consistency and just posting every single day and not giving myself excuses to not post. Obviously in the past two weeks or so, I've been chilling out because I have a fight coming up. I'm taking the social media and dialing it back a little. I'm getting a little lazy with it, but I also have one of the biggest fights of my life coming up. So I'm focusing on this fight and then after this fight, we're going to get right back to our schedule of social media posting."
While he is nowhere near the end of his competitive career, Pergande is already trying to lay down a foundation for a successful life after fighting. In a social media era that is filled with volatility, trolls, and trash talk, Pergande said he's received been vastly positive energy. It's been humbling for him, seeing the response from the masses.
With Jake Paul and Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) taking the PFL reins, Pergande thinks the culmination of his successes couldn't have come at a better time.
"I feel like I will definitely be beneficial to their promotion and the way that I push myself on all socials," Pergande said. "If you just look at the numbers for my fight announcements and my fight week posts and stuff, it's blowing everyone else on the card away. The main card, main event, anyone that's on the card, my numbers are double, triple what they have. It's crazy. Yesterday, I posted my fight week photos. I know it's only going to get bigger but for me it's hard to comprehend sometimes. I think it was in 15-20 minutes, there were 3,000 likes. How is this possible? How are 3,000 people tapping the like button in 15 minutes? It's just so hard for me to comprehend sometimes but I am very grateful. I am very blessed that I do have this fanbase of people who are keeping up with me. It's all so amazing. There are always going to be haters, but I don't feel like I have that many haters. My comments are always filled with love and support. All these people are genuinely the best. It's been awesome. I'm super, super blessed."
More than anything else, Pergande hopes his in-cage performances can continue to show that he's not just a personality. He's one of PFL's top homegrown stars and is hoping a recent shift to lightweight propels him from prospect to contender.
"It kind of got to a point when I was a 25-year-old, 6-foot-1 featherweight, it gets taxing," Pergande said. "You can kind of see it in my performance, too. I have to be extremely reserved with the techniques and the things that I do. That's not how I train. I'm like, 'Why am I putting my body through this if I'm not fighting like I train?' I train at a super high pace. I train with lots of volume. I love fighting that way. I can't do that in my fights because of the weight cut and the way it was effecting me. I feel like in my lat fight you could kind of see that in the third round. I took all the damage, the whole two-and-a-half rounds, I was absolutely dominating this guy. Then, the last two-and-a-half minutes, I just crashed. I took all the damage on my face in the last two-and-a-half minutes. I was like, 'You know what? I think it's time to make them move up to lightweight."
Standing in his way is stiff competition. Magomedov is believed by many, including Pergande, to his toughest opponent to date. The style matchup of a Khabib Nurmagomedov-trained, wrestling-based fighter is the perfect challenge.
"I think this is such a classic grappler vs. striker matchup," Pergande said. "What a lot of people don't know is I also have wrestling and grappling in my back pocket. I think it's such a good name. He's part of the Nurmagomedov name. He's had Khabib in his corner. He's part of that whole team. It's definitely a great matchup not even for the audience and the people, but also for myself to test myself against a good wrestler like that. I'm just excited to go out there and test my skills and see what he has to bring on fight night."
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Alexei Pergande discusses sudden social media fame, potential with Jake Paul and MVP
