Ahead of his title fight against Jiri Prochazka this coming weekend in the UFC 303 main event, Alex Pereira has already highlighted who he’d like to defend his title against next.
Alex Pereira has quickly become one of the UFC’s biggest stars, and after the promotion lost Conor McGregor from the UFC 303 International Fight Week card, they called upon their Brazilian champion.
‘Poatan’ and Jiri Prochazka have already shared the Octagon once before, when Pereira finished the former champion in the second round of their vacant title fight at UFC 295 back in November.
Alex Pereira wants to ‘shut a lot of people up’ by fighting Russian next
The booking of Pereira vs Prochazka came as quite the surprise, especially with it being put together on such short notice.
Although the Czech striker currently sits at rank one in the 205lb division, he has only won one fight since his loss to the Brazilian, finishing the returning Aleksandar Rakic at UFC 300 this past April.
Magomed Ankalaev has seemingly been waiting in line for a title shot for a while, and it seemed as though he would be next, before the promotion announced the UFC 303 rematch.
Despite that, ‘Poatan’ has already highlighted the Russian contender as his next fight as he wants to ‘shut a lot of people up’ by beating the 32-year-old.
“Magomed Ankalaev is a guy I would like to test myself against. A lot of people talk about that matchup and say that he will submit me really quickly,” Pereira told Stake.
“I would like to shut a lot of those people up and show a lot of my ground game as well. It won’t be an easy fight but it’ll be a very interesting fight,” the Brazilian champion continued.
The 36-year-old also has a longstanding rivalry with former middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya, but he has admitted that if ‘The Last Stylebender’ wants to finish their feud with one last fight, it’d have to be at 205lbs.
“I wouldn’t go back to middleweight to face Israel Adesanya. I don’t even think I can make 185lbs anymore, plus I feel super motivated at light heavyweight. If there were talks about another match with him it would have to be at light heavyweight,” Pereira stated.
Adesanya is booked to fight middleweight champion, Dricus Du Plessis, at UFC 305 on August 17, in Perth, Western Australia.
Alex Pereira doubts fight with Jon Jones will ever happen
Following his successful title defense against Jamahal Hill at UFC 300, Pereira claimed that he wanted to move up to heavyweight to try and capture a third belt.
Current UFC heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, caught wind of ‘Poatan’s’ desire and teased online that he would like to fight the Brazilian.
However, Pereira doubts that fight will ever happen and believes ‘Bones’ will fight Stipe Miocic and then Tom Aspinall.
“I don’t know if it will ever happen. I have mentioned fighting at heavyweight before but it didn’t really get a lot of excitement. The last thing the UFC told me is that Jon Jones wanted to return from injury, fight Stipe Miocic and then Tom Aspinall. There’s so many factors to this so we will have to wait and see,” Pereira admitted.