The press conference for UFC 281 went down yesterday (November 9th), and was the first time during fight week that we got to see the main card fighters meet face to face.
We got a little bit of tension in the face-off between UFC middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya, and the the man that already holds two kickboxing victories over him, Alex Pereira. The two were silent at first, until Pereira began launching some words at Adesanya. Izzy responded with a few words, but then turned towards the crowd while doing a universal hand signal that implied that Alex was all talk. Pereira then also turned to greet the crowd with two fists clutched in the air.
There wasn’t much heat in the staredown for the UFC 281 co-main event between Carla Esparza and Weili Zhang. There was about two feet of space between the two athletes, which was plenty enough to allow them to size up one another, but you can tell that this is strictly business and there is zero animosity here.
Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler had themselves a pretty intense face-off, getting about within an inch-and-a-half of the nose of the other man. Some words were exchanged back and forth, but the top-ranked lightweight ultimately shook hands and went their separate ways.
Starting at the 4:54 mark, you can check out the UFC 281 press conference face-offs from the UFC’s YouTube channel:
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