Ray Longo has watched a lot of punches land in his life, and the one that seems to bother him most about Alex Pereira’s heavyweight run wasn’t even a power shot.
Talking on the Anik & Florian Podcast, as MMA Fighting reported, the veteran striking coach went back to Pereira’s loss to Ciryl Gane at UFC White House in June and pointed at a moment that should worry anyone booking Poatan against giants. “I mean, I think [Pereira] got knocked down with a jab, if I’m not mistaken, right?” Longo said. “It wasn’t even like a power punch, but these guys are huge.”
Longo hedged on the exact strike, so take the detail with that caveat. His larger read is the part worth chewing on, and I think he’s mostly right, though for a reason slightly different from the one in the headlines.
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The size argument, and the bigger problem underneath it
The short version of Longo’s take is that Pereira is too small for the top of the division. “These guys, I think, might be too big,” he said. “They’re really, really big guys.” He closed that thought with a line that sums up the whole debate: “At 185, big difference. 250, I don’t know.”
The more interesting piece is the stylistic diagnosis, because that’s where size turns from a talking point into a liability. Longo compared Pereira’s defensive habits to Bobby Green, which is a wild and kind of perfect reference. “He’s got the power, but he keeps his hands down,” Longo said. Then he went further, saying that even in sparring Pereira takes shots on purpose. “He likes to get hit and come back,” he said.
That approach built a legend at middleweight and light heavyweight. Pereira’s five-year UFC run includes signature wins over Israel Adesanya, Jiri Prochazka, Sean Strickland and Magomed Ankalaev, and plenty of those nights involved him eating something heavy before he returned fire and ended it. The trade worked because, at 185 and 205, Pereira was usually the one holding the bigger hammer.
At heavyweight that math flips. If you’re willing to absorb a shot to land yours, the size of the other guy’s fist becomes the entire equation. Longo framed it as a question, and it’s the right one: “can he take the power coming back is the problem.” Against Gane, by Longo’s account, Pereira never got to the part where he comes back.
Longo was also clear he didn’t come away from the fight thinking a rematch would go differently. He waved off the fouls (“forget the head, the illegal shots, they were horrible”) and said he “saw nothing before that” suggesting Pereira could beat Gane a second time. He mentioned “the size difference, the way he was moving” as the things that stood out.
This is a coach who clearly likes the fighter. “I love Alex,” he said before any of the criticism. He admitted he expected the Gane fight to play out another way entirely. “It didn’t go the way I saw it going, not in a good way for Alex,” Longo said.
Pavlovich is the worst possible test for this exact flaw
Here’s where I’d push Longo’s point harder than he did. Pereira’s next assignment is Sergei Pavlovich, a five-round co-headliner at UFC 335 on Dec. 12, per BJPenn.com. Pavlovich sits at No. 5 in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings and has spent years hovering around the heavyweight title picture.
Gane beat Pereira with length and movement. Pavlovich is a far blunter instrument, a heavy hitter who wants exactly the exchange Pereira likes to invite. Longo called it “going to be a tough fight, too,” and added that Pereira’s style means “I don’t think he can afford to get hit by these guys.” If the hands-down, eat-one-to-give-one habit stays the same, Pereira is essentially volunteering for a firefight with a man who doesn’t need to win the exchange cleanly to end it.
The context makes this a high-stakes booking. Pereira vacated the light heavyweight title earlier this year to commit to heavyweight full time, so there’s no 205 belt waiting as a safety net. He went to the White House chasing history as the UFC’s first three-division champion and left with a second-round TKO loss. BJPenn.com also reported that a UFC Hall of Famer floated the idea that a loss to Pavlovich could push Pereira toward retirement, which is speculation, but it tells you how heavy December feels.
The upside is real too. Beat Pavlovich, and MMA Fighting noted Pereira could be back in a title fight in 2027, likely against a Gane who now holds the undisputed belt after Tom Aspinall vacated it.
My take
Longo’s right, and the size framing actually sells his point short. Plenty of smaller heavyweights have survived up there by not getting hit. Pereira’s problem is that his entire game is built on agreeing to get hit. That bargain made sense against Adesanya and Prochazka. Against men who walk around near 250, it’s a bad contract.
Pereira has 10 weeks to show he’s tightened the guard. If his hands are still at his waist when Pavlovich starts throwing on Dec. 12, Longo won’t need to say another word.
