Alex Pereira has offered to make the cut all the way down to middleweight for one final fight with Dricus Du Plessis.
The terrifying Brazilian began his MMA profession at 185lb as he pursued then-champion Israel Adesanya, whom Du Plessis defeated last night at UFC 305. On the time of Pereira’s move from kickboxing, the Nigerian was essentially unbeatable at the burden, until reuniting together with his old rival.
Now, Pereira is up at light-heavyweight, and appeared to have left his middleweight dreams behind until last night. Actually, the more popular consensus was that he may move up a division to challenge either Tom Aspinall or Jon Jones for the heavyweight belt.
Alex Pereira shares chilling message to Dricus Du Plessis after UFC 305 KO
America and the UK got the UFC 305 most important event within the early hours of Sunday morning after a Saturday night of fights. However the bouts actually led to the early evening on Sunday local time in Perth where they were held.
Dricus Du Plessis had a tricky go of it over 4 rounds as he squared off with one in every of the middleweight greats Israel Adesanya in what was essentially an away fight. But he managed to land a fourth round submission that sees him legitimised as champion after a controversial initial win over Sean Strickland.
Within the immediate aftermath he was shown various challengers, but none made the headlines quite like former middleweight champion Alex Pereira. The present light-heavyweight champion shared a photograph of himself watching the fight with the straightforward caption “Coming all the way down to 185 yet another time”.
Pereira hasn’t made middleweight since early last yr when he rematched Adesanya at UFC 287 in Miami. That night, he was knocked out by a challenger hell-bent on revenge following three defeats across different disciplines in fights he was arguably winning.
Dricus Du Plessis accepts Alex Pereira’s callout, on one condition
Dricus Du Plessis seemed to be well up for Pereira’s challenge, but had one caveat for making the super-fight. As an alternative of draining the light-heavyweight champion to a weight well under his walking around 230lb, he desired to move up and challenge for a second belt.
Pereira is currently scheduled to return at UFC 307 in October. Nevertheless, the indisputable fact that he faces Khalil Rountree Jr is indicative of a weaker pool of challengers following an incredibly lively title reign since winning the belt as recently as November.
“I truthfully don’t think Alex Pereira should drop all the way down to 185lbs,” Du Plessis said during his post-fight press conference when asked about his rival’s post. “If he desires to, great, perfect, but then we’re going to get the justifications. We saw Izzy stiff that man in the primary [second] round.
“I felt Izzy’s punching power tonight. , Izzy has great timing. He’s fast, he’s long, and he has great combos, but I felt the facility. If Izzy stiffens you want that, you don’t want to be in there with me.
“Especially once you’re going to are available there with excuses like I cut an excessive amount of weight, everyone seems to be going to say that.”
Dricus Du Plessis’ coach also wants move as much as light-heavyweight
It’s not only Du Plessis himself who’s considering the super-fight, together with his trainer Morne Visser also keen on such a matchup. He even branded the potential bout a ‘blessing’, but concurred that it needs to be done at Pereira’s more natural light-heavyweight.
“No – I won’t give him the enjoyment to go all the way down to 185,” Visser told Submission Radio after UFC 305. “We’ll just go up… He doesn’t wish to beat him [at 185 because] he’ll say that we’ve gone down, he was fatigued and whatever so no, we’ll go up [instead].
“I’m sure that the UFC shall be okay with it, if that’s what he’s said, [and] I do know Dricus is game, so we’ll go up – we won’t wait for him to come back down. He’s fighting in October, so I actually hope that the UFC gives us this blessing for December.”
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