He’s no “Mountain” but the Chinese boxer is one of the world’s most dangerous heavyweights.
Wrap up your closing arguments for UFC 286 — for which there are aplenty — because the UFC 287 pay-per-view (PPV) card is just around the corner and will feature the middleweight rematch (or Part 4, depending on your scorecard) between newly-crowned 185-pound champion Alex Pereira and former division titleholder Israel Adesanya.
To help prepare for his “Last Stylebender” showdown, which may in fact be the last with another victory, Pereira strapped on the gloves and went four rounds with Olympic medalist Zhilei Zhang, a 6’6”, 290-pound monster who is 24-1-1 in boxing with 19 knockouts.
“What a sparring! After four rounds with Zhilei Zhang I’m very confident for my next fight!” Pereira wrote on social media. “It was a hard and dangerous sparring — exactly what I needed. Now I know even more: I’m [100-percent] ready for 8th of April!”
Pereira holds two victories and one knockout over Adesanya on the kickboxing circuit and after racking up three straight wins with two finishes under the UFC banner, “Poatan” scored another Adesanya fight and halted “The Last Stylebender” in the final frame.
UFC 287 will go down on Sat., April 8, 2023 at Miami-Dade Arena in Miami, Florida, and also feature the welterweight collision between former 170-pound title challengers Gilbert Burns and Jorge Masvidal. Elsewhere on the card (see it here), Kevin Holland looks to test his chin against welterweight “Dagger” Santiago Ponzinibbio.