Since Alex Pereira’s lackluster performance and loss to Magomed Ankalaev, he’s been raked over the coals.
The match with Ankalaev was supposed to propel him to UFC royalty and set up a possible highly-anticipated match with Jon Jones (which would probably never happen. The Aspinall fight hasn’t even been announced yet).
However, Pereira has one name in his corner trying to throw him a bone: Chael Sonnen.
“You don’t get very far when you start talking about Alex Pereira vs. Jon Jones,” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel. “You just don’t get there because we know that Jon can throw him down and beat him up. Like, that’s just something that Jon does so well. He can throw people down and then beat them up.
“Well, you go watch this fight, and you go, ‘Hey, you know what? It turns out that old Alex Pereira isn’t so easy to take down.’ Alex Pereira really showed some stuff. That entire narrative that he can’t wrestle and he can’t defend is now gone. Ankalaev revealed his plan and that was to take him down – his plan failed.”
Look, no disrespect to Ankalaev, but he’s no Jon Jones.
Jon Jones is a monster, and Daniel Cormier has similar insight. Cormier added that the loss to Ankalaev shows that Pereira would struggle dealing with the strength of the heavyweight division.
“The amount of pressure Ankalaev was able to generate without the danger coming back at him like we expected, those heavyweights will walk right through what he was throwing at him,” Cormier said.
Pereira’s team is promising a rematch; however, when and if that fight happens remains to be seen.
However, Pereira may want to consider what happened to Kamaru Usman after his first loss to Leon Edwards. Six months later, he jumped right back into the octagon, only to lose again to Edwards. He lost his following match with Khamzat Chimaev in UFC 294.
Pereira may be eager to return to the octagon but wants to slow down and get together before facing off with Ankalaev again.
