UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira is back atop the MMA mountaintop after knocking out Magomed Ankalaev in a rematch earlier this month to exact revenge from a decision defeat he suffered in March. <\/p>\n
Before Pereira became a pound-for-pound kingpin and a face for the UFC, he was a middleweight and light heavyweight champion with GLORY Kickboxing who tallied a 33-7 record (21 KOs) in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cPoatan\u201d Pereira has taken MMA by storm since joining the UFC in 2021 and becoming a two-division champion along the way. And now, the 38-year-old Brazilian is planning to cross over and make his mark in boxing.<\/p>\n
“I am definitely going to box,” Pereira told Connect Cast. “Look, I made it clear that I want to fight boxing. Same thing, right? When I got into kickboxing, they didn’t believe me. MMA, same thing. Boxing, they’ll say the same thing. But I’m used to it, I don’t care. I just want to go out there and fight. It’s not about aiming for more money. I like a challenge. I want to be the best.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Pereira challenged Oleksandr Usyk<\/a>. It was a gesture that the undisputed heavyweight champion from Ukraine mildly entertained. For the time being, Pereira (13-3, 11 KOs MMA) is planning on more legacy-defining fights in MMA and wants to move up to heavyweight to face Jon Jones.<\/p>\n Manouk Akopyan is The Ring\u2019s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira is back atop the MMA mountaintop after knocking out Magomed Ankalaev in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,2989,2983,2831,2988,2981,2984,2985,2986,2987,2982,1920,2993,2992,1913,2976,2977,2990,2978,2975,2994,2772,85,2991,2974,2980,2979],"class_list":["post-237484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-results","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-news","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou<\/a> proved against Tyson Fury<\/a> and Anthony Joshua<\/a> that if there is money to be made and public demand for such matchups, the crossover clashes will come to fruition. <\/p>\n