Alex Pereira has achieved a lot in his brief UFC run so far — and he might not be close to done yet.
The Brazilian, who turns 37 this month, secured his second defence of the UFC light heavyweight title at Saturday night’s UFC 303 event in Las Vegas, scoring his second successive knockout win against former champion Jiri Prochazka in the main event. The win underscores Pereira’s status as the UFC’s biggest breakout star of the past couple of years and, as was said on commentary, perhaps the highest profile fighter on the UFC roster not named Conor McGregor.
And that star could shine even brighter if, as Pereira has suggested he is open to, he is given an opportunity to chase gold in the heavyweight division.
However, any such move would be a longer-term aspiration. The current heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, remains linked to a long-delayed bout with Stipe Miocic that has rendered the division to a standstill. And with interim champion Tom Aspinall also waiting in the wings, the heavyweight fold seems tied up.
“It’s not that I’m not into it,” UFC boss told the media, including The Mac Life, on Saturday night. “The guy was a middleweight and then moves up to light heavyweight. He’s had a couple of fights there and defended his title, but it’s not like this guy has been in the division for two years, and he ran through everybody that’s in the division, and it’s like, ‘Come on, what’s next? At least let him move to heavyweight.’
“It’s a whole other level going up to heavyweight,” White added. “Even as big as Jon Jones is, as good as Jon Jones is, you know, when Jon Jones was moving up to heavyweight, we were like, ‘This is going to be interesting.’ It wasn’t.
“If he cleaned out the division, and we were like, ‘There’s literally nobody for this guy to fight,’ and he’s 37, if he wants to move up to heavyweight – but that’s not the case.”
So it appears as if any talk of Pereira moving to heavyweight will have to wait, for now at least. But maybe, just maybe, Alex Pereira vs. Tom Aspinall for the UFC interim heavyweight title has become a little more of a possibility.
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