Alex Pereira sets sights on unprecedented UFC history
Alex Pereira is not one for bombast.He’s not much of a braggart.
He doesn’t actively denigrate his foes.All he does is fight better than just about any human of his size in the history of sanctioned combat sports.Already a two-division champion by the time he descended upon Washington last week in advance of Sunday night’s UFC Freedom 250 spectacle on the South Lawn of the White House, Pereira was poised to become the first in UFC history to challenge for gold in a third weight class.Forget winning for a moment; nobody had even attempted to make this sort of history.Conor McGregor never did it, growing satisfied with success not long after adding a lightweight crown to his featherweight belt nearly 10 years ago at Madison Square Garden.Ilia Topuria, who on Sunday sought to unify the lightweight championship against interim champion Justin Gaethje, just may one day follow Islam Makhachev up to welterweight in a bid to add it to his belt collection.
For now, he’s merely a two-division king after previously reigning at featherweight.Pereira, who’s not even reached the five-year mark in the UFC, already has middleweight and light heavyweight gold to his name, matching in MMA what he’d accomplished in the realm of elite kickboxing.He sized out each weight class, and heavyweight is his final frontier.Unlike McGregor and Topuria, whose time as champions is not known for a high level of activity, Pereira’s workmanlike approach to defending his crown made it more of a mandate that he move on to bigger and better things.“I think everything that I’ve been doing gave me enough credentials to fight for this third belt,” Pereira told The Post through an interpreter in the leadup to the event.Say what you will about the interim championship that was up for grabs between Pereira and Ciryl Gane at the residence of President Trump, but UFC gold is UFC gold.
The title was created with heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall still sidelined by the highly damaging doubl...