Charles Oliveira has known Alex Pereira for more than a decade, so his fight prediction deserves the grain of salt you’d apply to a guy grading his own kid’s Little League swing. Take it seriously anyway. Buried in the friendly hype is one sentence that reads like an actual scouting report.
Oliveira talked to MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz ahead of UFC 335, set for Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The BMF champion explained how Pereira gets past Sergei Pavlovich, and most of it was the usual buddy-on-the-same-card stuff. Then he said this: “Pavlovich doesn’t defend against kicks, and Poatan kicks a lot.”
That’s the pick. The rest is garnish.
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Count the ifs
Here’s the bulk of Oliveira’s case for the finish: “If Poatan lands a punch, if he’s in the right mindset and gets his timing right, if he lands that punch, he can also knock him out easily.” He closed with “if he manages to connect and gets his timing right first, it will definitely be another great knockout.”
That’s four ifs in two sentences, which is about the number of conditions I attach to a Saturday ticket before I ignore all of them and bet it anyway. The idea that whoever lands wins applies to nearly everybody at heavyweight, and it applies to the other guy too. Oliveira himself described Pavlovich as “a very tough guy, a heavy hitter, a big guy, a strong guy.” The landing-a-punch path is a two-way street, and Pavlovich is the one who’s already been driving on it at this weight.
The word I keep coming back to is first. Oliveira’s condition was that Pereira connects and gets his timing right first. That’s a friend quietly admitting the sequencing matters, and that the second guy to land in this fight might not be around to throw a third shot.
Why the kicks are the real argument
The kick observation is specific enough to be wrong, which is exactly why I like it. It describes how the fight gets won, instead of describing what happens after somebody already won it.
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The logic goes like this. If Pavlovich doesn’t defend kicks, Pereira doesn’t have to live in the pocket with a heavy hitter to do damage. He can work from range, tax whatever Pavlovich plants on the floor, and make every step forward cost something. Oliveira also noted that “Poatan moves well,” and that’s the other half of the plan. Kicks without footwork just give a big puncher a stationary target. Kicks with footwork make the big puncher reach, and reaching is how heavy hitters get caught.
The skeptic in me wants to see it before I fully buy it. Oliveira didn’t attach a number to the claim, and a kick-defense note from a close friend of the opponent belongs in the scouting file until somebody backs it with a stat sheet. But it’s a scouting note from a former lightweight champion who has spent his career finding the one opening in a guy’s game and living there. I’ll weigh that above most of what passes for analysis in fight week.
What’s riding on it
The stakes are lopsided in an interesting way. According to MMA Fighting, Pereira goes into this one still looking for his first heavyweight win. That’s new territory, and new territory against a big, strong heavyweight is precisely where kick-heavy strikers either look brilliant or look small. Pavlovich doesn’t need a plan as complicated as Pereira’s. He needs one clean exchange.
Oliveira’s own situation is cleaner. He’s on a two-fight winning streak after beating Mateusz Gamrot in Rio de Janeiro in 2025 and Max Holloway in March, and he defends the BMF title against Diego Lopes on the same card. The two Brazilians fill the top two fights on the night. Oliveira has been lobbying for a giant soccer stadium show in Brazil with Pereira on it, and he called this Vegas pairing “something huge, something we’re really happy to be a part of alongside him.”
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They’ve shared a Las Vegas card before, at UFC 300 in April 2024. That night split the household. Oliveira dropped a close split decision to Arman Tsarukyan, and moments later Pereira knocked out Jamahal Hill. Maybe that history colors how Oliveira sees his friend’s chances, maybe not. Either way, he’s betting on the guy who rescued the last shared card.
One housekeeping note: Cruz’s Portuguese-language post on X labeled the event UFC 334, while MMA Fighting’s English write-up and its X post both say UFC 335. Same date, same building, same fight.
I’m not putting a dime down until I see where this line settles and whether kick talk moves it. What I’ll actually be watching on Dec. 12 is simple. The first time Pereira throws a kick, does Pavlovich check it, catch it, or eat it? If he eats the first three, Oliveira was right.
