Alex Pereira is moving up to the light heavyweight division.
The former middleweight champion dropped a massive amount of weight to make the 185-pound limit and may have contributed to his losing performance against Israel Adesanya in the main event of UFC 287 earlier this month in Miami.
No word yet on who will face “Poatan” in his debut at 205lbs, but former UFC heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, who also held the gold at 265lbs, thinks Pereira should avoid a tough wrestler like Magomed Ankalaev .
“This is the match you want to avoid as Alex Pereira,” Cormier said in his interview YouTube channel (Written by Farah Hannoun). “I think the only one in 205 that you want to avoid right now is Ankalaev because Ankalaev can wrestle, and we saw that in the fight against Jan Blachowicz, where he knocked him down in the last three rounds. Right now there are very few wrestlers, so if you’re Alex Pereira, you’re I’m not worried about going up to 205, you may be in the past because there don’t seem to be a lot of guys to worry about just getting you down and laying on you.”
Pereira, who turns 36 in July, continues to be criticized for his lack of wrestling, despite this effort from Bhutan to prove otherwise. To be fair, the Brazilian has only had nine fights in MMA and has spent most of his combat sports career in the world of kickboxing.
Ankalayev, 30, hasn’t competed since his draw with Jan Balashovic at UFC 282 in December. The Dagestani priest scored a pair of takedowns in that contest and also hit three tackles in his victory over Nikita Krylov at UFC Vegas 20 in early 2021.
Personally, I’d rather see Pereira wait and explode with the return of Aleksandar Rakitic.