Alex Pereira aims for a second UFC belt as he moves up to 205 pounds, with his journey beginning on July 29 when he faces former champion Jan Blachowicz at UFC 291.
Can Alex Pereira pull off the improbable all over again? After losing the UFC middleweight title to Israel Adesanya in April, “Poatan” is set to move up to 205 pounds to pursue a second UFC belt to add to his trophy case. The hunt begins on July 29 when Pereira faces former champion Jan Blachowicz at UFC 291. Pereira already held two-division championships in his past life at GLORY Kickboxing, but longtime light heavyweight contender Anthony Smith has doubts if history can repeat itself in MMA.
“I think he can do well, for sure,” Smith said recently on The MMA Hour. “He’s going to have a tough time with some of the top guys, just with his skill set. But just in pure striking matches, I think he can do well. I think Jan Blachowicz is a pretty tough matchup, if I’m being honest. I think it’s a really tough matchup. Yeah, I do [think Pereira loses that].” Pereira, 35, captured simultaneous titles at both 85 kilograms and 95 kilograms in GLORY before making the full-time move to pursue MMA in 2021. He immediately found success, racking up four consecutive wins under the UFC umbrella, including a stunning fifth-round knockout of Adesanya in November to capture the UFC middleweight belt and become Fighter of the Year.
However, Pereira’s brutal knockout loss to Adesanya in their rematch ended that magical run. Now, the fearsome 6-foot-4 striker is eyeing a similar championship run at light heavyweight, which is no easy feat. The 20-pound gap between middleweight and light heavyweight is the largest between any of the UFC’s divisions, and no fighter in history has won UFC titles in both categories. Even Adesanya failed in his attempt in March 2021 when he lost a unanimous decision to then-champ Blachowicz at UFC 259.
Pereira will enter title contention if he gets past Blachowicz, but Smith believes the elite of the division — headlined by current champ Jamahal Hill and former champ Jiri Prochazka — still present plenty of problems for the former middleweight belt-holder. “I think Jamahal Hill beats him too,” Smith said. “It’s a matchup thing, though. It’s a matchup thing. There’s a lot of guys at light heavyweight that he’ll beat and could look really great doing it. Jan Blachowicz is tough… It’s just, there’s a lot of ways for Jan Blachowicz to make this difficult… And Jamahal Hill has got a really funky way of striking. He’s really hard to prepare for. He’s got really good eyes. He’s hard to hit. He hinges at the waist differently. He defends kicks well enough and he’s not bad on the ground. People don’t give him enough credit for his grappling. I think that he proved a lot of that in the Glover Teixeira fight. I do think there’s a storyline there, though, for Jamahal and Alex, for sure — kind of get one back for his mentor, which I think would be cool. But I’m just not sure that he gets through Blachowicz.”