Alex Pereira doesn’t think Sergei Pavlovich wants a kickboxing match. Heading into their UFC 335 heavyweight fight, the Brazilian expects Pavlovich to turn to wrestling and grappling instead of standing in front of him, as Yahoo Sports and Sherdog both reported Monday.
The outlets didn’t detail how Pereira expects the takedowns to come or when. The prediction landed during a busy media stretch for him, most of it running through an interview with @connect_cast, and that interview produced a few lines that will follow him into fight week.
The 205 escape hatch
The loudest one was about losing. Pereira said that if Pavlovich beats him, he isn’t sticking around at heavyweight to absorb punishment from bigger men.
View post on X
“Everyone knows I’m not as heavy as those heavyweights. I’m not going to stay there taking a beating with that disadvantage,” Pereira said, per a clip shared by Championship Rounds. “I’d go back to my division, where I was already well adapted. It would be [straight] for the [light heavyweight] belt.”
So the plan, as he laid it out, is a loss at heavyweight followed by an immediate title shot at 205. Plenty of guys have floated that kind of soft landing in private. Pereira said it into a microphone before the fight.
Israel Adesanya, his old rival, did not care for it. In a clip posted by @MightyMouse, Adesanya took issue with Pereira putting the idea out there at all.
View post on X
“I don’t like that. I don’t like putting that out there. F*ck you mean if you lose? Go back to ‘Chama,’ all this fugazi BS. Stick to Chama,” Adesanya said.
When the guy you fought four times is telling you to quit hedging, that’s a scouting report of its own.
Still chewing on Gane
Pereira also revisited his fight with Ciryl Gane, saying he believes the result would have been different with someone other than Herb Dean as the referee. His version: Gane had emptied his tank, the stoppage came while Pereira was still upright, and Gane looked relieved it was over.
“[Gane] wore himself out badly there and couldn’t knock me out. They stopped the fight and I was still standing. I wasn’t on the ground,” Pereira said. “He was like ‘I can’t believe it. Thank God it’s over.’ You could see how heavily he was breathing.”
View post on X
Camp is moving along, and not gently. Championship Rounds posted footage Monday of Pereira eating some big shots from Glover Teixeira in sparring, which is about what you’d expect from a training partner who doesn’t take days off.
Quick take
Predicting that Pavlovich will wrestle is a reasonable read on paper. A big heavyweight facing the most dangerous left hook in the building has every reason to look for a body lock. My problem is the sequencing. Pereira told everyone what he expects Pavlovich to do, then told everyone what he’ll do if it works. Adesanya is right that the second part didn’t need saying. Heavyweight isn’t a division you visit with one foot in the door, and if Pavlovich gets him down early at UFC 335, that 205 return ticket is going to get brought up in every post-fight question he takes.
