A hectic travel schedule is nothing UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira isn’t used to.
Pereira (12-2 MMA, 9-1 UFC) defends his light heavyweight title against Magomed Ankalaev (20-1-1 MMA, 11-1-1 UFC) March 8 in the UFC 313 headliner at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (ESPN+ pay-per-view, ESPNews, ESPN+).
Daniel Cormier was concerned with Pereira traveling to Sydney, Australia to corner Sean Strickland for his title fight against middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis earlier this month at UFC 312. “Poatan” explains that he already had prior obligations to be in Sydney, and ensured that his team flew over with him so he can continue his fight prep there.
“Sean and I have a good friendship now, and a lot of people are thinking that I just went out there to be in his corner,” Pereira told Bloody Elbow through an interpreter. “But I had these prior commitments in Australia and it just ended up that it worked out for me to be over there in his corner. I heard people saying, ‘Oh he doesn’t even speak English, what difference does it make him being there?’ But we have the same kind of energy. We’re on the same vibe. We’re both fighting in the same company, so there’s a lot of good rapport between us.
“What I can say to Cormier and a bunch of the other specialists that have been saying that I shouldn’t have gone out there: I’ve been in this situation before. It’s actually been worse before when I was in Australia and had signed up to fight, and didn’t even know I was going to fight. But this time it was all very planned out. I knew what I wanted to do, I took basically my whole team down there. There were eight people in Australia with me, so we knew exactly what we were doing, and we planned it all.”
Pereira recalled his hefty travel schedule prior to facing Israel Adesanya in their kickboxing match in China in 2016, and how that didn’t end up impacting the outcome of the fight. He defeated Adesanya by unanimous decision.
“A lot of people are talking about the traveling and all of the trips. Maybe it’s not the ideal situation,” Pereira said. “But I feel like I’m very experienced with that, and I’ve done this a million times, to be honest.”
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