{"id":385951,"date":"2026-01-02T02:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T02:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/385951\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T02:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T02:46:10","slug":"alex-pereira-ufc-light-heavyweights-lose-to-prime-daniel-cormier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/385951\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Pereira, UFC light heavyweights lose to prime Daniel Cormier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cIf I was at my prime in light heavyweight right now, there\u2019s no wrestlers,\u201d Cormier said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/-payNde1hwA?si=HJm2t3nk_bRcyoup\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Q&amp;A for Alien Films<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019d be just feasting on everybody. At light heavyweight, there\u2019s no wrestlers. If I was in my prime, probably (would fight) Pereira because he\u2019s the biggest star and you want to make the most money as a champion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2020\/8\/17\/21372560\/ufc-252-daniel-cormier-issues-statement-loss-retirement-stipe-miocic-hell-of-a-ride-espn-apex-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">retired Cormier<\/a>, who held championship gold at both heavyweight and light heavyweight, was an NCAA All American wrestler out of Oklahoma State and a two-time Olympic qualifier. During his UFC career, the 22-3 \u201cDC\u201d used his wrestling to thwart dangerous strikers like Anderson Silva (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2016\/7\/9\/12138120\/ufc-200-results-daniel-cormier-mugs-hugs-anderson-silva-decision-light-heavyweight-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC 200<\/a>) and Derrick Lewis (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2018\/11\/4\/18060450\/ufc-230-results-daniel-cormier-wrestles-strangles-derrick-lewis-submission-rear-naked-choke-nyc-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC 230<\/a>), among others.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cThere\u2019s no wrestlers,\u201d Cormier explained. \u201cWhen I was fighting, the top five was me, [Jon] Jones, Ryan Bader was an All-American, Phil Davis was a National champion, Rashad Evans was an NCAA All-American. We had so many wrestlers. Now there\u2019s no wrestlers so it\u2019s like yeah, I\u2019d go fight at light heavyweight, not heavyweight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf I was at my prime in light heavyweight right now, there\u2019s no wrestlers,\u201d Cormier said in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-385951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385951","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=385951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}