UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira has become one of the UFC’s biggest stars in an extremely short amount of time, but welterweight contender Joaquin Buckley thinks he’s making the sport look ‘stupid’.
After joining the promotion in 2021, Alex Pereira has rapidly emerged as one of the biggest stars in combat sports, having won both the UFC middleweight and light heavyweight titles in just three years.
Not only that, but this year specifically, ‘Poatan’ has dug the promotion out of extremely difficult positions, filling in for fights on short notice to save both UFC 300 and UFC 303.
Joaquin Buckley accuses Alex Pereira of making the sport look ‘stupid’
Despite being one of the favorites amongst fans, the 37-year-old has been respectfully slammed by number 11 ranked welterweight contender, Joaquin Buckley.
‘New Mansa’ was building quite the following for himself after a run of extremely impressive performances, but after calling out Conor McGregor following his recent win over Nursulton Ruziboev, he seems to have lost momentum.
Possibly in an attempt to recapture the attention, the 30-year-old has accused ‘Poatan’ of making the sport look ‘stupid’ and ‘reta*ded’ because of how quickly he has become a star at the top of MMA.
“No disrespect to Alex Pereira because I’m a fan of that motherf***** right now, that s*** is crazy what he’s doing, but it’s still like, how is he able to do that? It makes (MMA) look stupid and reta*ded,” Buckley told Parry Punch.
“You’ve got guys now from different professions that are like ‘Ah yeah I can do that s***’ and become the UFC champion too, it shouldn’t be like that. I’m not taking away from Alex Pereira, he might be working his ass off every motherf****** day to get there.
“But when you have someone that has solely trained MMA in itself and his whole goal as he got started in combat was to be a UFC fighter but then you’ve got another guy who’s coming over transitioning from a different sport still able to beat you, that’s a problem. I don’t think a lot of guys are applying themselves like they should,” Buckley continued.
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Alex Pereira’s next move unknown with Magomed Ankalaev booked in another fight
The reigning 205lb champion was assumed to be defending his title against Russian contender, Magomed Ankalaev next, but bizarrely, the UFC announced last week that Ankalaev will take on Aleksandar Rakic at UFC 308.
With that, the promotion told Ankalaev and his management that they have different plans for ‘Poatan’, leaving fans bemused.
The 37-year-old has previously hinted at moving up to heavyweight to try and win a title in his third weight class, however, he stated he would likely do so after defending his title against Ankalaev.
Heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, is likely to defend his title against Stipe Miocic in November, with interim champion Tom Aspinal coming after that.
Although Aspinall has claimed he will now wait for his next fight to be for the undisputed title instead of defending his interim title again, he has previously flirted with the idea of fighting the Brazilian champion, so the UFC could be working on making that fight.