Alex Pereira went into his first light heavyweight title defense with an injury.
Still, that didn’t stop ‘Poatan’ from adding another highlight-reel knockout to his resume, dispatching former champion Jamahal Hill in the opening round of their headliner with a booming left uppercut.
Immediately following the bout, Pereira appeared to be preoccupied with his foot, something that didn’t go unnoticed by play-by-play man Jon Anik. ‘Poatan’ later confirmed that he suffered a toe injury during fight camp and has since released footage of the incident on Instagram.
Alex Pereira reveals footage of him breaking his toe before #UFC300: pic.twitter.com/BqTCyDS2dl
— The Fight Bubble (@thefightbubble) April 16, 2024
Alex Pereira reveals footage of him breaking his toe before
Dana White thought Alex Pereira’s toe injury happened in the fight
Shortly after UFC 300 concluded, Dana White spoke about Pereira’s injury, which he initially thought was sustained during the fight with Hill — not two weeks prior.
“You guys don’t know this yet but I’ll tell you. I just found out when I went up in the octagon because I saw [Pereira] messing around with his foot,” White said at the UFC 300 post-fight press conference. “He broke his toe two weeks ago. He fought tonight with a broken toe, I thought he broke his toe in the fight. His team was like, ‘No he broke his toe two weeks ago.’ He was like, ‘I ain’t losing this opportunity for a f*cing pinky toe.’”
When it was Pereira’s turn to speak with media members, he confirmed White’s comment, revealing that he had broken his toe weeks out from UFC 300, but chose to push through rather than bowing out of the landmark main event.
“That happened in the last couple of weeks,” Pereira said. “It’s not something that I was going to pull out of the fight. I had to push through. It happened in the moment of my camp that I had to be slowing down my training, so I had to just push through.”
Clearly, the lingering injury didn’t prevent him from putting away yet another former UFC champion. Unfortunately, it will probably stop him from making a quick turnaround to fight Tom Aspinall at UFC 301 on May 4.
