Alex Pereira has done pretty well for himself in his short Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) career.
Brazil’s “Poatan” achieved two-division champion status after only seven fights in the promotion. Before he captured his current Light Heavyweight title, Pereira, 36, was the Middleweight kingpin for a brief spell. Ultimately, his longtime rival, Israel Adesanya, scored redemption in their mixed martial arts (MMA) rematch that prompted the move up in weight after UFC 287 in April 2023.
Pereira was a multiple-time kickboxing champion before he fully committed to MMA, so his striking has never been in question. However, his grappling abilities will likely never catch up at this rate despite the improvements he continues to make. Former Middleweight champion, Chris Weidman, still struggles to have faith in the titlist for this reason.
“It’s hard for me to get fully behind Pereira, because I do see such an opening with the wrestling, and he hasn’t really fought wrestlers who will take advantage of that,” Weidman said on Believe You Me. “It’s hard to deal with, but it’s so crazy and it’s such a deficiency in what we’ve seen so far.
“It’s almost like Ben Askren coming into the UFC and being able to just become a multiple-time champion with no hands,” he continued. “It’s like a striker looking at Ben Askren and thinking, ‘How the hell is this guy the world champion?’ He was able to do it in Bellator, he was able to do it in ONE FC. The guy had an unbelievable MMA career and had no striking at all. It looked awful but he was so good at wrestling he was able to do it.
“This guy is kinda the opposite, I’d almost say he’s as bad as Askren is with striking, and this guy may go down as one of the best fighters of all time,” Weidman concluded. “It is weird to see.”
Pereira earned his first successful UFC title defense against Jamahal Hill at UFC 300 earlier this month (April 13, 2024). Before Pereira’s first round knockout of “Sweet Dreams” (watch highlights), Weidman returned to the win column with a technical decision (watch highlights) over a past opponent of Pereira’s, Bruno Silva, at UFC Atlantic City last month (March 30, 2024).