One of MMA’s great striking specialists believes that Alex Pereira will reclaim the light heavyweight title in style on Saturday night.
Pereira will look to break Daniel Cormier’s record and avenge his defeat to Magomed Ankalaev when he returns at UFC 320 this weekend.
A lot of fans and fellow fighters didn’t think that ‘Poatan’ looked himself when he was beaten by the Russian at UFC 313 in March.
While a kickboxing legend believes that Pereira needs to have altered his sparring to emerge victorious, another accomplished striker has a different theory on what will make the difference.
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Stephen Thompson believes that Alex Pereira’s time off will allow him to recapture the title in devastating fashion
In a recent interview with Bloody Elbow, where he named his list of MMA’s greatest strikers, Stephen Thompson shared his thoughts on the main event of UFC 320.
As Thompson targets a rematch of his own, he stated that there’s a crucial aspect of this fight which he believes will give Alex Pereira a huge advantage.
There was a lot of talk both before and after his first fight with Magomed Ankalaev regarding whether the former champion’s constant activity had impacted the quality of his performance.
Thompson made reference to several fighters (Kevin Holland, Neil Magny and Donald Cerrone in particular) who were able to quickly put together win streaks before this eventually caught up to them.
‘Wonderboy’ believes that this happened to Pereira last time out, but after taking some time off, a full-strength ‘Poatan’ will reclaim the throne on October 4.
“Your body is just too worn down, they’re not all there. They didn’t look the same. If you notice, Alex just didn’t look like the Alex of old and I do believe he was too consistent. But, I was there live for that fight and I predicted that the next time that they fight, Alex Pereira is coming with a vengeance,” Thompson said.
“You need to give your body time to heal and I think it’s going to be all Alex this time. I think he’s going to go out there and he’s gonna crush him.”
Tom Aspinall believes that Magomed Ankalaev is simply a bad matchup for Alex Pereira
When providing his breakdown of the main event, UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall made a big claim about Alex Pereira.
“I think the matchups were quite favorable to Alex Pereira up until Magomed Ankalaev,” the Brit stated during TNT Sports’ Tom Aspinall’s Fight Lab.
While Aspinall recognized that ‘Poatan’ was able to stop all of his opponent’s takedowns the first time around, he believes that Ankalaev still presents a huge problem to the Brazilian due to his grappling.
“Just with the threats of the takedown, even in the first fight we didn’t really see Ankalaev really go for the takedowns too much, but I think just the threat being there, stylistically he’s a bad matchup for Pereira,” Aspinall added.