The UFC has released corner footage from its White House card, and it puts Alex Pereira’s team right back in the middle of the argument over how Ciryl Gane finished him. In the clip, Pereira’s head coach Plinio Cruz can be seen and heard yelling “back of the head” at referee Herb Dean as Gane had Pereira in serious trouble during the second round.
MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck reported on the video Friday. It includes angles from both corners, so you get Gane’s side celebrating and Cruz pleading with Dean in the same stretch of time.
The fight headlined UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 in Washington, DC, at the White House. Gane won the interim heavyweight title by second-round knockout. The shots in question came during an exchange where Gane had Pereira badly hurt just before the stoppage, and the Pereira camp has argued since that night that some of them landed behind the head.
That interim belt didn’t stay interim for long. Tom Aspinall vacated the undisputed title because of lingering issues from his eye injuries, which made Gane the full heavyweight champion. That’s about the best outcome an interim strap can hope for, and it’s a good argument that the thing never needed to exist in the first place.
Pereira hasn’t kept quiet about any of this. He’s been openly critical of Dean since the fight ended, and now his coach’s reaction is on tape for anyone who wants to slow it down frame by frame.
What’s next for both men
Gane makes his first title defense against Josh Hokit in the main event of UFC 334 on Nov. 14 at Madison Square Garden. Two heavyweights in the Garden headlining a card is my kind of November.
“Poatan” is back a month later. Pereira faces Sergei Pavlovich in the co-main event of UFC 335 in December, still chasing the chance to become the first three-division champion in UFC history. Pavlovich is about the least forgiving test you could book for a guy coming off a knockout loss at heavyweight, and somebody in matchmaking deserves a drink for it.
My take: the footage tells us Cruz was furious in real time, which is useful because it kills the idea that the complaint was invented after the fact. It doesn’t tell us where the punches landed, and the clip shows the corner’s reaction rather than a clean look at the strikes themselves. Corners yell “back of the head” in almost every finish where their guy is losing. If Pereira beats Pavlovich in December, the loudest voice in this debate gets a direct path back to Gane, and that’s how it should get settled.
