Alex Pereira teased a move to heavyweight after his knockout victory at UFC 300, but Dana White isn’t a fan of the idea of seeing ‘Poatan’ moving divisions again.
Alex Pereira has opened the door to becoming a three-division UFC champion; however, not everyone is on board with ‘Poatan’ moving up weight classes just yet – despite taking no damage in his UFC 300 title fight against Jamahal Hill.
Alex Pereira calls for a move to heavyweight after UFC 300 victory
Alex Pereira waved away the referee for a low blow before landing a picture-perfect shovel-uppercut to KO former light heavyweight champion Jamahal Hill inside the very first round at UFC 300.
Speaking to Joe Rogan in his post-fight interview, Pereira reaffirmed his desire to move up divisions to heavyweight in order to land himself a main event spot at UFC 301 in Brazil, which takes place in just a few weeks’ time on May 4:
“I talked a lot about fighting in Brazil if I won this fight, I won this fight, I’m not hurt nothing happened, I know there needs to be a lot of promotion behind a fight, but I want to have a fight at heavyweight [at UFC 301].”
Dana White isn’t keen on seeing Pereira move up divisions
Whilst Pereira might be eyeing a move up to heavyweight, the tease certainly hasn’t gone over well with everyone in the MMA community; with fans expressing their frustration in recent months over champions moving up instead of clearing out their own weight divisions first.
At the post-fight press conference, even Dana White appeared to push back on the idea of ‘Poatan’ changing divisions, citing both the strength of competition in the premier division and the fact that Pereira looked so good at 205lbs:
“So, when you think about him [Alex Pereira] moving up to heavyweight, you’ve got [Jon] Jones, you’ve got [Tom] Aspinall, and the list goes on and on in that heavyweight division.”
“The heavyweight division is nasty, and I don’t think that’s the right move for him.”
“He looked damn good tonight in the division that he’s in so I think he might want to stick around there for a minute,” said Dana White, before reiterating that a move up to heavyweight might become more probable if Pereira should defend the belt a few more times.
“I don’t know, these are things that we’re going to talk about for the next 15 Tuesdays, you know what I mean, but we’ll get it figured out [eventually].”
Aspinall and Pereira share cryptic messages after ‘cold’ photo
Interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall was sitting cageside for UFC 300 and after the main event concluded, posted a fantastic image of him staring down Alex Pereira from the sidelines.
The Brazilian superstar was asked about both the image and the possibility of facing Aspinall at heavyweight during his post-fight press conference:
“I don’t know man, only he can respond to that…I said that I want to fight at heavyweight but I’m not going to give names right here, I said I want to fight at heavyweight so why would I choose [the opponent].”
Whilst the UFC will undoubtedly want to boost UFC 301 by having such a powerhouse as Pereira added to the card, it’s doubtful that that fight would be against Aspinall given the UFC returning to Manchester later in the summer.
MMAFighting’s Jed Meshew posted in response to the suggestion of Pereira facing the Brit: “Let him [fight at heavyweight]. Doesn’t have to be Tom Aspinall. Let Pereira nuke some poor idiot in Rio like they use to let Anderson do.”